avatarArticles by Rachel Cheetham-Richard

Apr 22, 2011

Philly Tech Week and Us

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In the midst of a busy spring conference schedule, we’re participating in an exciting series of events here in Philadelphia, all part of the first-annual Philly Tech Week.  A week-long celebration of technology and innovation in Philadelphia, Philly Tech Week intends to grow the impact of our innovative region through events focused on technology, collaboration and improving Philadelphia.

While Philly might still appear to some as the city of the cheesesteak and the Mummers — which it is — the city has also seen the emergence of  an extremely vibrant tech community over the past several years.  When Azavea started operating 10 years ago, it was challenging to find peers with whom to exchange ideas, hang out or build stuff.  Today, Philly’s tech community includes groups like Ignite Philly, Technically Philly, Philly .Net, Philly NetSquared, Refresh Philly, Breadboard, Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Temple University Center for Design and Innovation, University City Science Center, Make: Philly, the Corzo Center for the Creative Economy at the University of the Arts, TEDxPhilly, Code for America: The Philadelphia Project … I am sure we’re forgetting some.  The energy is palpable, and it feels good to be a part of it! We’ve organized a few tech get-togethers in our office, two Hackathons, and have participated in many of the events organized by these great groups.

So when we heard that the good folks at Technically Philly were organizing Philly Tech Week (next week: April 25-29), we knew we wanted to be part of it.  There’s a lot going on, but here’re the events in which we’ll be participating:

OpenDataPhilly Rollout – April 25, noon-1pm at WHYY
For the past few months, we’ve been talking with our good friend Roz Duffy, the City of Philadelphia’s Open Access Philly task force , Technically Philly and WHYY about creating a Philadelphia-centric open data portal.  Philly Tech Week seemed like a perfect opportunity to roll it out.  We’ll be rolling out OpenDataPhilly –- the first online catalog of Philadelphia-centric datasets — at noon on Monday, April 25 at WHYY. For more information about the project, read our newsletter article.

To attend the launch event, visit http://opendataphilly.org/ . You can also follow us on Twitter @opendataphilly

Panelists on Augmented Reality Check: Seeing the Future Now – April 26, 6pm at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Deb Boyer and Josh Marcus will be part of a panel of artists and software developers  discussing the intersection of art, technology, and science and the use of augmented reality. We will discuss the development process of our NEH-funded Augmented Reality by PhillyHistory application. This event is organized by Breadboard, in conjunction with the Philadelphia Science Festival, Philly Tech Week, and Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts.  More information about the panel is here.

Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference – April 27-28, 8am at the Sheraton Old City
Five of our colleagues will attend this conference for developers, architects, and IT executives.  Subjects as expansive and intricate as emerging technology and Open Source will be discussed by industry experts who will provide up-to-the-minute insight.  For more info and to register, visit the conference site.

PhillyTreeMap Rollout – April 29, noon at WHYY
As part of Philly Tech Week’s Green Tech Week Showcase event, we will launch PhillyTreeMap, a wiki-style, web-based geography-enabled urban tree inventory for the city.  The application is a joint project between the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the City of Philadelphia Parks and Recreation, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission and Azavea.  For more information about PhillyTreeMap, read our newsletter article.

PhillyTreeMap will be available as of Friday, April 29 at http://www.phillytreemap.org/

BarCamp News Innovation Philadelphia Open Gov Hackathon – April 30, 9am-5pm at Temple University, Annenberg Hall
One of our staff will be a judge at this all-day hacking event presented by Tropo. The hackathon will bring together software developers, designers, civic coders and journalists for a one-day sprint to develop useful applications utilizing data from OpenDataPhilly. Find out the details, here.

We hope to see you at one of the events.  Enjoy Philly Tech Week!

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Mar 10, 2011

Pushing the Boundaries of Geographic Data-Processing Over the Web

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Most contemporary work in GIS involves one or more of three major types of activity: a) database development; b) spatial analysis and map production; and c) web-based map display.  Applications of GIS analysis technology are enormously diverse:  land planning, climate change modeling, assessing the impact of sea level rise, natural hazard risk assessment, military scenario planning, cell phone tower placement, and business siting, and many more.  Currently, these applications, which involve large amounts of geographic data-processing are usually tied to desktop workstations because of the significant amount of time, memory, and processing power required to execute the operations.

As computing power continues to grow, Azavea has become increasingly committed to making substantial improvements in the performance of GIS data computation (sometimes referred to as “geoprocessing”) over the web.  Ultimately, what we are seeking to make possible web-based GIS modeling that are so fast that you might think you’re playing a video game.  That’s no small endeavor, but the possibilities are mind-blowing.  Thanks to a National Science Foundation grant in 2010, we made significant progress on testing the feasibility of using graphics processing units (GPUs) to do just that.  If you’re interested in how we can hijack GPUs for GIS, check out our blog series on the research.

It is that context that this past January, our colleague, Tamara Manik-Perlman did a presentation on community planning tools that prioritize place-based decisions at the Esri GeoDesign Summit.  Make sure to watch her presentation and learn what we are up to.

Video credit: Esri. For more videos of the Esri 2011 GeoDesign Summit, visit: http://video.esri.com/series/13/2011-geodesign-summit

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Feb 17, 2011

Time to Give Back: Azavea Staff Allocate 2010 Charitable Contributions

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As a certified B Corporation, Azavea is held to a high set of corporate and environmental standards. We’re committed to keeping the interests of employees, our community and the environment at the core of our mission. We strive to create a challenging and intellectually stimulating environment for our colleagues and seek out projects with social value that help clients create more vibrant, sustainable communities (learn more here).

In addition to carefully selecting the types of projects with which we engage – public health, crime analysis, elections, human services, cultural resources, economic development, and land conservation, to name just a few – Azavea operates a pro bono program and gives away a portion of its annual profits to nonprofit organizations each year. Each of our 25 staff members is given the opportunity to allocate the contributions.  Each person receives 10 points they can distribute across a list of organizations that match our areas of interest including:

  • Ecosystem Services
  • Local Arts and Culture
  • Open Government and Rule of Law
  • Internet and Open Data
  • Sustainable Transportation
  • Growing Underdeveloped Markets

We’re pleased to announce that our staff selected the following organizations for our 2010 charitable contributions. We believe that the work they are doing is well worth our support, and we hope you’ll take a moment or two to learn more about them.

Ecosystem Services

Local Arts and Culture

Open Government and Rule of Law

Internet and Open Data

Sustainable Transportation

Growing Underdeveloped Markets

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Feb 01, 2011

An NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant to Enable PhillyHistory.org to Experiment with Augmented Reality

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We’ve been announcing loud and clear that we are adding augmented reality capabilities to PhillyHistory.org, a web application we built for the Philadelphia Department of Records that enables the geographic search and management of tens of thousands of historic photos and maps.

Currently, PhillyHistory users are able to search the website from their smart phones and compare the historic images from PhillyHistory.org with the location where they are standing.  If they are not standing in the street, they can also access  contemporary 360-degree street level views on PhillyHistory.org,  thanks to the system’s integration with Google Street View and Google Earth, to see what a location looks like today.  However, augmented reality technology is different in the sense that it enables users to access additional information about the world around them in relation to their location as they point their smart phone directly at a building or street.

Why are we involved in this?

Research.  While we hear and have read about unbelievably exciting projects using augmented reality, like the app released a few months ago by the Museum of London, augmented reality technology is still in its infancy and not much has been written about what is and is not possible.  The Philadelphia Department of Records was awarded an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant to research both the creation of historic photographs as overlays and how augmented reality scales with a very large database of assets. Remember, PhillyHistory.org currently holds over 93,000 assets (and is still growing)!

The Department of Records will initially provide point-and-view access to a subset of approximately 500 historic photographs of selected sites around the city (thanks to Deb Boyer and our great PhillyHistory interns*) for a prototype application we are building as part of our research. Users will be able to automatically access and view the historic photographs by simply pointing a smart phone at the contemporary site and selecting an available image.  The prototype application will focus on images from several neighborhoods in the downtown area although images from other neighborhoods will also be used in order to evaluate issues such as tree cover, building height and other sources for multi-path error that may affect the accuracy of the augmented reality display.  In addition to the 500 photographs, the project team will work with an advisory committee, three of whom are the co-editors of the planned Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, to provide additional interpretive information for up to 20 of the 500 sites.

Josh Marcus who is working with Erik Osheim on the prototype application is already recording his progress in a Developer Journal on our Labs blog, but we are also planning to publish a white paper through NEH later this year to summarize our findings, which we will make available for free.  The white paper will outline our research into various methods for creating an augmented reality application as well as the implementation process in both iPhone and Android platforms.  We hope our conclusions on the successes and challenges will prove useful to other organizations considering implementation of augmented reality applications.

* Read captivating blogs written by Hillary Kativa, Timothy Horning, Leslie O’Neill, and Deb on PhillyHistory.org’s blog.  Great thanks go to our guest PhillyHistory bloggers as well: Steve Ujifusa, Ron Hoess, Shawn Evans, Christopher Dougherty, Harry Boonin, Ron Avery, and others.

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Sep 01, 2010

What’s In a New Website? Beyond a New Look, Content that Defines a Whole Brand.

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In March 2010 we changed our name from “Avencia” to “Azavea” to put an end to a legal dispute in which we had been entangled for a few years.  While a pretty disruptive event, to say the least, we saw this as an opportunity to re-introduce ourselves to the audience that had known us under the original name and to use this as a fresh start.  We also saw the event as a chance to reinforce our mission and services, and, in the process, develop a better understanding of how we might more effectively communicate this information to our customers and partners.  So how did we go about this?

First and foremost, we needed to understand our audience’s perceptions of the company’s brand.  If we had tons of cash, we would have conducted focus groups, but we’re a small company, so we sent out a questionnaire to a limited but targeted group of people.  The idea was to ask the same questions to a varied group of people and see how their responses differed or correlated with what our marketing messages intended to convey.  The group included:

  • Staff members: 2 who had been with the firm longer; 3 who had joined us recently.
  • Members of our constituency: clients; non-client stakeholders.
  • Remotely connected people: friends of the company’s owners; people who knew about the company, but who didn’t necessarily know what GIS is, our industry, and/or products.

We asked straightforward questions:

  • What does the company specialize in?
  • What is your current perception of the company?
  • What do you think the company’s strengths are?
  • What do you think the company’s mission is?
  • Is there an aspect of what the company does that is not clear to you?
  • What differentiates the company from other GIS software companies?
  • What do you think the company’s values are?

The survey uncovered both some strengths that we could build upon and expand as well as some aspects of our mission and offerings that we needed to more effectively articulate and clarify.

So, first the good news.  All survey respondents understood that the company specializes in building web-based geo-enabled/ GIS/ geospatial software, and that we like to take on and solve interesting and complex challenges that involved geographic data.  We were both surprised and pleased about some of the strengths and differentiating aspects that respondents highlighted:

  • Best suited to work with clients in academic, government, nonprofits, and NGOs
  • Socially responsible and aware
  • Willingness to work on projects that have socially-redeeming values
  • Patience and honesty
  • Extremely strong customer service
  • Agility, creativity, and flexibility, i.e., think from the customer’s perspective and needs rather than providing out-of-the box solutions
  • Interested in bringing very advanced technologies to the fore, i.e., an intellectual approach to what can be done with GIS data instead of a boilerplate approach
  • Tailor-made, visually beautiful work that is also budget conscious
  • Dedication to stay on the leading edge of the field
  • Work that bridges between pure research and real world solutions
  • Intellectually motivating projects and work environment
  • Smart, capable, professional yet casual staff

This was probably best summarized by one of the respondent: “When we first came on as a client, I accidentally sent an email to avencia.org, not .com.  This isn’t a slight.  As much as it’s a for-profit entity, I see [the firm] largely aligned towards the pursuit of information and a sense of social justice.  Its values aren’t political or partisan, they’re academic.”

Interestingly enough, though, while we discuss how our products have been used in some of our clients’ projects in each of our bi-monthly e-newsletter, and while each of our products also has its own dedicated website, the survey revealed that a) some respondents did not know we have product offerings beyond our custom software development services, and b) they didn’t understand the relation between our custom software and analysis projects and our software products.  It was also not entirely clear if all respondents understood that one of our strong interests lies in engaging in geospatial analysis and modeling rather than just building solutions that display data points/ assets on web-based maps and software.

So we now knew what we were communicating effectively as well as several aspects of the company we needed to work harder at articulating in the future.

Once we determined what the brand provides, what had been clearly understood and what needed to be better explained, we needed to fully understand who the brand is and how people perceived it, not just in terms of offerings, but in terms of its personality.  In turn, this personality is what would determine the tone of our new communication pieces, e.g. whimsical, academic, witty, light, didactic, etc.  Thus, part of the survey, we also asked the following questions:

  • Which well-known personality does the company remind you of?
  • Which personality characteristics does this person embrace?

We smiled at the following responses:

And embraced the following personality traits:

  • Smart, serious, sophisticated, but not afraid to be witty and funny as hell
  • Hard-working, creative, eager, intelligent, very detail-oriented, involved, focused, earnest, light-hearted, youthful, idealistic and inventive
  • The Underdog
  • 4 parts knowledge, 3 parts good people skills, 2 parts geek chic

Strengthened with what we’d learned from our customers, employees and partners, we conducted a four-month re-branding campaign that began with a letter from Robert Cheetham, (Azavea’s president and CEO), press releases, announcements about our new name and our newly acquired B Corporation status, articles in our e-newsletter, and Google ad campaigns.  Each communication piece attempted to reinforce what the survey had revealed as well as clarify areas of uncertainty.

This enabled us to articulate a clearer and stronger value proposition, i.e., the primary reason a potential client should hire us.  We wrote a more precise internal positioning statement, i.e., statement that expresses how a company wishes to be perceived.  This is the core message an organization wants to deliver in every communication medium.  And finally, we crafted a new tagline (Beyond dots on a map.) that I think differentiates our brand while being meaningful and evocative.

Our new website comes as a summary of the entire re-branding process, and it attempts to emphasize the following:

So a new website is indeed much more than a fresh face on an organization – it can be an opportunity to re-articulate what the organization does as well as what it stands for.

Our new website was also an opportunity to improve the systems that underpin it – check out Jeremy’s blog to read more about that.  What’s your feedback on Azavea’s brand?  What well-known personality does it remind you of?  Make sure to let us know.

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May 21, 2010

Azavea Has Become a Certified B Corporation. What’s That?

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We are pleased and proud to announce that we have joined over 280 other leading companies who are setting a new corporate standard for social and environmental performance, by becoming a Certified B Corporation, a.k.a B Corp.

B what? you might ask!

Last spring Azavea joined a regional organization called the Sustainable Business Network (SBN) of Greater Philadelphia.  Originally founded by Judy Wicks of the White Dog Cafe, SBN is now part of a national network of private, independent, locally owned businesses that operate in support of a “triple bottom line“.  The triple bottom line extends the measurement of business success from the usual bottom line (profits) to “people, planet and profit” and is based on the idea that companies should consider environmental and social impact as well as the usual profit motive.  While the idea was originally developed by a UK management consultant, John Elkington, it has spread to many parts of the world.

As part of joining SBN, we filled out an extensive survey created by an organization called B Lab.  B Lab (also based in the Philadelphia region though it operates nationally) was created to promote the designation of a new corporate form, the “B Corporation“.  Under current IRS regulations, there are several types of private for-profit businesses including C Corporations, S Corporations, LLC’s, LLP’s, partnerships and sole proprietors.  Azavea is an S Corporation (which is a C Corporation that elects a special status under Subchapter S of the IRS code).  The B Corporation status represents a new type or for-profit company that uses the power of businesses operating in a market-based economy to solve social and ecosystem problems. B Lab is working with state legislatures to try to have the B Corporation status added as a new corporate form in each state.

b-corp-collage-475x171_azavea

Azavea joins other leading B Corp companies

So you might be thinking that all of that Corporate Social Responsibility (or “CSR”, to those in the know) stuff sounds good, but it’s actually kind of hard to measure.  How can they separate the green-washing from the sincere operations?  So B Lab has developed a survey that attempts to capture the business practices of an organization and score them.  Companies that score high enough can become certified as B Corporations.  And they don’t just take your word for it, they audit the firm’s statements to ensure the integrity of the results.

But it’s not all. To become certified, B Corporations must meet comprehensive and transparent social and environmental performance standards, and amend their corporate by-laws to incorporate the interests of employees, community, and the environment. They also agree to contribute a portion of their revenue (based on the company’s size) each year to B Lab to support the program, and to undergo an audit of their business practices once every 2 years to ensure that their business practices continue to align with the B Corporation’s principles.

You might now wonder why Azavea would qualify.  The B Corporation status emphasizes the triple bottom line of social responsibility, sustainability and profitability (people, planet, profit).  At Azavea, many of our business decisions stem from these three principles.

We were founded in 2000 with the vision to build innovative location-based web and mobile solutions and perform spatial analysis for clients committed to making positive and enduring impacts in the communities they serve. We have worked with numerous non-profit, academic and government clients to answer complex geospatial questions in a wide variety of domains including natural resource planning, neighborhood revitalization, economic development, crime analysis, real estate property analysis, redistricting, political advocacy, and cultural resources.

But most of our B Corporation points came from our management and employment practices, including:

  • Financial transparency – we open the books to all of our full-time staff
  • We hold at least two meetings per year to report to employees on company performance
  • 100% health care, prescriptions and dental care.  For care that’s not covered by our health plan, we offer up to $2,000 per year in medical reimbursements
  • Public Transit and biking cost reimbursement plans
  • Paid time off for voting
  • Paid maternity and paternity leave
  • Retirement plan with company match
  • Profit sharing plan
  • Domestic partner benefits
  • 3 weeks vacation plus additional sick time
  • Training and professional development opportunities
  • Reimbursement for continuing education expenses
  • Part-time / flex time schedules available
  • Portion of profits go to charitable organizations
  • Mission statement that incorporates social value and employee interests

Moreover, our 10% personal research and pro bono programs have enabled staff members to spend some time working on projects that are not focused on the immediate needs of a particular client, while at the same time enabling the company to expand its skill sets and broaden its business opportunities in areas and domains not explored before. These programs have been at the source of projects such as Walkshed (to calculate and map walkability), BusMinder (a real-time bus notification application), a white paper on Gerrymandering, geographic service maps for MANNA, and the Haitian Earthquake Registry, to name a few.

The same service-oriented attitude extends to Azavea’s commitment to redistributing a minimum of 2% of our annual profits to charitable organizations selected by staff through the company’s “Time to Give Back” program.

But we’re not resting on our laurels! In addition to the business benefits, the B Lab survey also highlighted some areas where we can improve.  Here are some of the ideas:

  • Establish a Board of Advisers made up people independent of the company
  • Develop an environmental policy
  • Conduct environmental review / audit and share with staff and customers
  • Measure our annual energy consumption and use it to develop metrics by which we can reduce it

We are proud of our new corporate status and look forward to implementing some of the above ideas in our business practices.

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Aug 19, 2009

Azavea Makes the Inc. Magazine’s
500 | 5000 List

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Azavea was named one of the nation’s fastest-growing companies on the 2009 Inc. Magazine’s 500|5000 List at number 1,741 and ranks 52 in the Greater Philadelphia region, based on its 182.4 percent revenue growth over the past three years.

inc5000_logo

The 2009 Inc. 500|5000 serves as a unique report card on the U.S. economy.  Despite the current gloomy economic situation, the aggregate revenue among the companies on the 2009 Inc. 5000 List increased to $214 billion, up $29 billion from last year, with a median three-year growth rate of 126 percent. The Inc. 5000 are responsible for creating more than 1 million jobs since their founding, making the list perhaps the best example of the impact private, fast-growing companies can have on the economy.

This year’s list also offers a preview of which industries are poised for growth in coming years. With an average growth rate of 667 percent, Insurance ranked as the top industry overall. Government Services was the top industry gainer with 252 companies on this year’s list, up from 135 last year. Health is the top industry by both total revenue ($22.7 billion) and total employment (156,223 jobs).

After ranking 13 on the 2009 Inner City 100 List, we are thrilled to be part of the Inc. 5000 List for the first time.

Read more about the 2009 Inc. 500|5000, here.

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