In his presentation of the organization’s regional report yesterday, tucked between the usual facts about local higher education attainment and the diverse makeup of the region’s industries was a whole slide about the city’s “entrepreneurial ecosystem,” namely highlighting the region’s more than 20 coworking spaces and incubators.

It seems that the region’s burgeoning coworking scene is now a selling point for Select Greater Philadelphia, the economic development arm of the Chamber of Commerce. Old City coworking pioneer Indy Hall even gets a few photos in the physical copy of the Regional Report.

Select Greater Philadelphia has helped about 90 firms and 4,000 jobs relocate to the region since it was founded in 2003, Morr said.

Last month, it invited about seven international journalists to tour the region’s tech entrepreneurship scene in an effort to get global coverage.

“So far, the coverage has been uniformly positive,” said Morr, noting that two international media outlets had already written about the trip.

Here are five big numbers from the report, which is meant to be a guide to why businesses should relocate here:

• $390.3 billion: Greater Philadelphia’s Regional Gross Product
• 151,400: Number of workers employed in STEM, amounting to 5.4 percent of the region’s total employment. That number (151,400) is 10 percent more than the national average. 
• 24,408: Master’s degrees awarded in 2012. The region’s colleges and universities award almost five percent more Master’s Degrees per total degrees awarded than the national average.
• $10.2+ billion: The amount the region spends on research & development. The private sector make up $8.9 billion, while universities spent more than $1.3 billion on research and development.
• $194,048: The median sales price of a Philadelphia region house in 2012 (Q2).

Visit the Chinese site here.

PHLCVB also recently launched a new DiscoverPHL website that’s translatable into four languages and an updated mobile app. The new site stresses the “PHL” branding campaign that PHLCVB launched last fall.

Download the visitors’ guide app here. Visit the DiscoverPHL site here.

The new site, built by Kansas City-based firm MMGY Global, includes the following features, as described by PHLCVB’s press release:

• Listings for non-PHLCVB members: New for local business owners is the ability to create a business listing even if not a PHLCVB member, providing access to new potential customers.

• Member-generated Events and Deals: PHLCVB members can now add searchable events and deals, increasing their exposure and driving traffic.

• Meeting and Convention Resources: A meeting section with tons of tools for meeting planners preparing events at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, hotels and other venues.

• Booking Engine: New hotel booking engine powered by Booking.com, the world’s leading online hotel reservation agency by room nights sold. The booking engine was chosen because of its global reach and availability to consumers in 41 languages and currencies.

• Maps and Itineraries: Plot an itinerary, search for hotels by categories, view restaurants in particular neighborhoods and more, via a new interactive map.

• Favorites: Create an account and map Favorites – restaurants, attractions, hotels etc., which can be saved and accessed at a later date, including from a mobile device.

The outward reach comes at a time when the Convention Center’s outlook for the future is looking rather grim around continued labor concerns. Also, you’ll note that the acronym has shifted in branding from PCVB to PHLCVB, part of the branding campaign spearheaded by Danielle Cohn.

WHO’S GETTING FUNDED?

Novotorium, the Langhorne, Pa.-based incubator focused on health and wellness compoanies, invested an undisclosed amount in Dunnamic, an interactive design studio with medical animation experience, according to a release. Dunnamic is located in Langhorne and won’t be taking office space in Novotorium, said spokesman Chuck Hall.

Wharton grads Ryan Frankel and Kunal Sarda were on ABC’s Shark Tank season finale with their translation startup VerbalizeIt and apparently started a little investor war between “the sharks,” Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported. In the end, New York City-based VerbalizeIt took $250,000 in investment.

Who says you can’t raise money in Philly? That was the focus on Philly Startup Leaders president and Artisan Mobile CEO Bob Moul‘s cheeky tweet, listing local funding rounds. It’d be interesting to see how much of those rounds came from local money. At least one, RJMetrics’ recent $6.25 million round, came entirely from the West Coast.

WHO’S MAKING MOVES?

PeopleLinx hired Michael Idinopulos as its Chief Marketing Officer. He was previously the general manager and chief customer officer of Socialtext, a Silicon Valley-based company that offers enterprise collaboration software. Check out a Q&A with Idinopulos on the PeopleLinx blog and watch his TED talk below.

Clutch, the Ambler, Pa.-based mobile shopping app, launched an Android version of its app, according to a release. Get it here. Clutch is led by Ned Moore, who founded Malvern’s Portico Systems, an IT service provider that was acquired by McKesson in 2011.

Gregory FCA and Safeguard Scientifics‘ contest to find the “Best Unknown Business in America” is still going on. Get more details and apply here by June 18. The contest has received “dozens” of entries “in industries from consumer products to technology to retail,” said spokeswoman Alicia Buonanno, adding that four local companies have applied.

Solve Media just released its first children’s book: Bot or Not? It’s a playful marketing effort to explain why Solve Media does the work it does. Watch actor Michael Winslow read the book out loud below.

WHO’S GETTING BUZZ?

Ernst & Young announced the finalists for its Entrepreneur of the Year Award. It’s a list that includes the founders of local startups like Revzilla, Curalate, Greenphire, the Neat Company and more. The winner will be announced on June 20.

New York City VC Fred Wilson is a DuckDuckGo fan, Business Insider Australia reported.

FastFig, the DreamIt Ventures Austin company that is back in Philly, where it was founded, won the Philly EdTech Meetup’s “Teacher Tank,” a Shark Tank-esque pitching competition. FastFig, based out of Venturef0rth, helps students with math homework.

Watch this video of the ZenKars team, which recently won the Wharton Business Plan Competition. Produced by Wharton Magazine, the video shows “a day in the life of [these] student entrepreneurs.”

But Greg Lobanov, a rising senior digital media major, already had a taste of the indie game development world with his company Dumb and Fat Games, and he wasn’t thrilled with the idea of doing intern grunt work. So he hired himself.

Despite the rise of student entrepreneurship, Lobanov is the first student to do this, outside of a few entrepreneurial business majors.

Since starting his co-op last month, he’s already launched Perfection, a puzzle game that IndieGames.com called “Fruit Ninja for smart people.” 

Get Perfection for $0.99 here.

Lobanov first had to convince Drexel to allow him to hire himself for his co-op. He had to write a “strong, passionate pitch,” prove his track record by highlighting the games he had already developed and show why this route would be a better experience than a traditional internship.

“It seems to me that anything I’d be doing as an intern anywhere couldn’t possibly be as interesting, challenging, educational, or as catered to my interests as making entire games on my own rule,” Lobanov wrote in an email to Technically Philly.

He also snagged Garth DeAngelis, lead producer at Baltimore-based Firaxis Games, to be his mentor for the program.

Lobanov’s been using the time to work on things like marketing his games and juggling multiple projects — things he said he didn’t have much time to focus on as a full-time student.

He’s also using the co-op for another purpose: it’s a way for him to test the waters and see if he should pursue his own game company after he graduates. If he can prove to himself that he can be self-sustaining, he’ll keep at it, he said.

For Lobanov, making games is the easy part. Now, he said, he needs to learn how to make them successful.

He remembers “Sister Benjamin, who ran a rudimentary lab filled with Radio Shack Tandy computers,” saying that “we used to go there to learn how to do things.”

Iaconesi is one of 32 2013 Eisenhower fellows that finished their seven-week program this week. The Eisenhower Fellowships is a Center City-based organization that offers both both international and U.S. fellowships. DreamIt Ventures cofounder Steve Welch and Wilco Electronic Systems executive vice president Brigitte Daniel are previous Eisenhower fellows.

Below, learn more about the fellows who are focused on technology and the work they did during their fellowships. (Descriptions are from an Eisenhower Fellowships spokeswoman.)

International fellows (See the full list of international fellows here.)

Dr. Salvatore Iaconesi from Rome, ITALY

President, Art is Open Source

On his fellowship, Dr. Iaconesi will meet with key players in technology and research to explore mechanisms which can be used worldwide to promote artistic and social innovation.

Dr. Bruno Rondani from São Bernardo do Campo, BRAZIL
Chairman, Open Innovation Center, Brazil

He’s trying to connect industry, government and academic institutions in Brazil with similar organizations in the U.S. active in urban development, transportation, healthcare, disaster mitigation, and poverty eradication.

Wang Ruijun from Beijing, CHINA
Vice Director-General ? State Supervision Bureau, Ministry of Science and Technology

He will examine the role of the public, private, and academic sectors in advancing science and technology research; public policy frameworks for science and technology; and innovation and technology transfer programs.

Dr. Pilvi Torsti from Helsinki, FINLAND
Research Director ? University of Helsinki
Special Advisor to the Minister of Employment ? Government of Finland

She will meet with leading US thinkers, politicians, and institutions to discuss megatrends in areas such as sustainable growth, energy, digital technology and media, urban growth strategies of U.S. cities, U.S. political campaigns and movements, as well as the role of academics and scientists in the U.S. as part of political decision-making.

Dr. Yuhyun Park from Seoul, KOREA
CEO and Co-Founder ? infollutionZERO
Director ? President’s Office, Nanyang Technological University

Dr. Yuhyun Park is a social entrepreneur who co-founded InfollutionZERO, a project promoting digital citizenship for children, youth and parents. InfollutionZERO addresses the challenges of “infollution” (i.e. the harmful effects of digital “pollutants”) including cyberspace predators and bullies, abusive language, and technology addiction. She will meet with leaders in government, civil society, media and technology to discuss digital education programs for children.

Daniel Poohl from Stockholm, SWEDEN
Chairman and Editor-in-chief ? Expo Foundation

As Editor-in-Chief of Expo Magazine and President of the Expo Foundation, Daniel Poohl is committed to promoting democracy, tolerance, and freedom of speech in Sweden. In the U.S., he’ll explore how social media is used as a tool for organizing campaigns; meet with organizations working against intolerance; and understand how political campaigns are managed and organized.

USA Fellows (Find a full list of U.S. fellows here.)

Igor Jablokov from Charlotte, North Carolina
Entrepreneur in Residence, Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network

Igor Jablokov previously cofounded Yap, an institutionally funded venture that pioneered cloud-based speech recognition, and as Program Director of IBM’s multi-modality initiatives led a worldwide team that created the world’s first ever speech-enabled web browser. Mr. Jablokov serves on the boards of Queen City Forward, a non-profit focused on social entrepreneurship, and Veterans for Ventures, which helps veterans transition into high growth ventures. On his fellowship to Israel and Jordan, he will seek to understand their entrepreneurial ecosystems and how they are helping to increase the competitiveness of veterans in the job market.

Michael Schmedlen from Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Vice President, Worldwide Education for Hewlett-Packard

Has also worked with Lenovo, providing executive leadership for strategy, research, product development and marketing for an $8 billion commercial, education and healthcare technology business. Mr. Schmedlen founded the Education Research Initiative (ERI), a collaborative partnership whose mission is to connect students, teachers and researchers around the world to evaluate and quantify the use of technology to improve education. On his fellowship to the EU and Ireland, Mr. Schmedlen will seek to better understand the evolution of corporate social responsibility and how to increase its impact on creating shared value. In doing so, he will seek to maximize the positive societal and economic impact of corporate actors in global education and healthcare reform.

The effort won a $150,000 grant from ArtPlace America. It was one of four Philadelphia organizations to win grants from ArtPlace, a collaboration of national foundations that supports arts initiatives.

A partnership between The Hacktory, Breadboard and Public Workshop, the DMD will use the money to design and build a temporary structure along Market Street, according to a release.

So far, the DMD has seen support from the Knight Foundation ($100,000 from its Arts Challenge) and Cognizant.

Whether they have a spouse here, fit into the Sixth Borough phenomenon or just plum think Philadelphia offers enough to balance the daily trip, this city has for years had its residents who tried to balance the professional opportunities of New York with the personal ones of Philadelphia.

Now, like former Googler Michelle Lee and others, Burger-Lenehan has found the right professional fit in Philadelphia to complete the full migration here. In taking over a new role as Vice President of Product for Center City online ticketing platform Ticketleap, Burger-Lenehan has come back home.

“There are [other] Google employees who went to school or lived in Philly and would love to come back,” she said. “I’m looking forward to welcoming back some of that talent as the tech opportunities here continue to grow.”

Burger-Lenehan, 29, left a product manager role with Google, where she was working on the next generation of the company’s ad server for publishers. In her half decade there, she also worked on search quality.

“It was a five year master class on how to build for scale,” said the Glen Mills native and Haverford alumnae, who now lives in Lansdowne.

That education might come in handy. After a decade of steady growth (and modest talent spin off) outlasting many another online ticketing tool, Ticketleap is clearly at a juncture of change.

• Its founder Chris Stanchak departed and Tim Raybould took over leadership, just before company CTO Keith Fitzgerald was poached by PeopleLinx.
• After a rebranding and retooling, Ticketleap the platform looks as good as it has in years, but it still has functionality that needs to be trimmed and cleaned and it’s still a relatively small player in a fierce industry. It has goals to settle on.
• IPO-chatter continues as Eventbrite is still considered the startup darling, and there are no shortage of other social media-minded competitors. (In 2012, Eventbrite did $600 million in gross ticket sales, and Ticketleap did $55 million.)
• The firm was at 25 employees earlier this year, now is at 27 and plans to be at 30 in the coming weeks, said Burger-Lenehan.

To be clear, Ticketleap doesn’t have to best anyone to be successful, as ticketing has a strong, easily understood revenue model, but its long term viability depends on its product, now largely led by Burger-Lenehan.

Which means, after leaving the region for Google’s Mountain View headquarters in 2006, Burger-Lenehan is back with her clearest challenge yet. One that she says she’s excited to tackle.

“I’m 29 now and plan to grow old here in Philly,” she said.

In the spirit of coming back, Technically Philly asks why Ticketleap was the right fit to move away from Google and in the process we find out what her first word was.

Why is ticketing a good fit after years in search and ad-servers?

I’m really excited about working in the event space. Among the types of things you can buy or sell, I can’t think of anything cooler than events — I’ll take a ticket to a whiskey tasting or a Phillies game over a gift basket any day.

You joined Ticketleap at a time of big change — Stanchak leaving, Raybould stepping up and then Fitzgerald leaving.

We’ve taken the opportunity to dust off, reaffirm, and update our company values and strategy. That’s been a totally awesome process for me. For instance, one day in March, the entire TicketLeap team sat down, cracked open a few beers, and talked about our company values — it was a refreshingly honest and energizing experience.

I’m really proud of the team we have here. It’s fun to come in to a company that already has a great team, powerful product, and a ton of experience in its corner — and now we get step back, take it all in, and use it to build an even better solution for event creators.

You tell us Ticketleap had a team you believed in so it felt like the right time to leave Google. How does Philadelphia factor into the decision?

My husband and I actually moved to Philly more than three years ago. We had been living in the Bay Area, where I was working for Google. In order to live in Philly, I had been commuting to the Google office in New York. It was actually pretty manageable, but I always wanted to be a part of Philadelphia’s tech community, not New York’s, which, I would argue, is actually less of a community because it’s so diffuse. So when the right opportunity presented itself, I grabbed it.

What did you know about the broad technology community before taking the Ticketleap job?

Even though I’ve been living in Philly for the past three years, I must admit I was pretty out of the loop when it came to the local tech scene. I had been keeping a eye on a number of companies in the area but I definitely didn’t appreciate the diversity and character of the tech landscape here. I had the unfortunate impression that the good companies just got slurped up by buyers in New York or California and disappeared sometime thereafter. That’s false. While it has happened here, and everywhere, there are a number of great reasons to start something in Philly and to stay in Philly. I’ve always loved that RJMetrics 2011 blog post on the topic.

If your former colleagues ask you about Philly, how will you describe it?

I say, “if you have to ask…” That’s only mostly a joke. I think a lot of folks in California and New York can’t really imagine life elsewhere, and that’s fine. But I have and will continue to defend Philly for its scrappiness, accessibility and depth of character.

What will be your mark of success while at Ticketleap?

I want to see events powered by TicketLeap that wouldn’t have existed if we didn’t. My intent is to build a product so easy to use and on-point that it enables more people to organize great experiences and share them using TicketLeap.

Any particular moment come to mind when you knew you wanted to be working and living in Philadelphia?

I used to do a two hour one-way SEPTA-Amtrak combo commute almost every day. Now my biggest commute conundrum is whether I should get a monthly SEPTA pass or go all in on biking to work now that the weather is improving. I remember one morning on Amtrak reading the news that Cliff Lee left millions on the table with the Yankees to join the Phils. I was rolling over the Schuylkill, barreling toward Yankees territory, and watching the sun rise over the Philadelphia skyline. Boy did that feel tragic. It took me a while longer to find my role in Philly, but I like pretending that moment somehow cosmically connects me to Cliff.

OK, we have to ask: what’s up with the “Beah” name?

One year out, the company has ten employees working from its office (up from seven), including two remote employees that moved to Philadelphia since Technically Philly covered the opening of the office on N3rd Street. Wildbit still has three remote employees, said founder Chris Nagele.

The experience of having a physical office has been “enlightening,” Nagele said.

“While [the remote model] worked, and we launched two successful products with that model, nothing is more valued than face time,” Nagele said, adding that it’s better to keep your team close by.

This shift in attitude is in part shown by Wildbit’s recent hiring announcement, which specifies that the new hire must work at the company’s office.

Wildbit has also taken advantage of having a space to decorate. See more photos in this recent blog post.

Built for the Independence Visitors Center, it’s a mobile-optimized web app that lets tourists map stops for the Philly Phlash, a local sightseeing bus.

Check it out here.

It’s another development in the nvigor effort. Other projects include organizing Philly’s first Student Startup Summit held during Philly Tech Week and the Philly Health Codefest.

nvigor, who did the work on a volunteer basis, did most of the development work at the weekly Code for Philly hack nights at NoLibs’ Devnuts. The group was able to connect with the Independence Visitors Center through stakeholder group Open Access Philly, said cofounder Dias Gotama.

nvigor is also expanding its leadership team. Apply by May 24 here.

As part of a German massive open online course (MOOC) challenge, it’s pitching a startup law course for two audiences: aspiring lawyers and entrepreneurs.

Vote for Apprennet’s course here by May 23. Winners will get 25,000 Euros (more than $32,000) to implement the course.

Even if the idea does not win, Apprennet staff still plans on holding the course, said company spokeswoman Emily Foote. It’s using the competition as a marketing strategy, Foote said.

‘Advising Startups’ will be Apprennet’s third law MOOC. Its first course, on mergers and acquisitions, saw more than 200 students register within the first week of opening.

Apprennet now has four employees (and is looking for a developer) and is based out of Drexel’s ExCITe Center.