The biggest Philly tech stories of 2014 [Technical.ly Podcast]

2014 was the year Comcast announced it was going to build a new Center City skyscraper that would house 4,000 employees, the year N3rd Street became “official” and the year the Nutter administration’s startup investment fund made bets on five local companies.

And as Philly’s tech scene grows (and attracts venture capital from the West Coast), we’re still talking about the importance of location: should a startup follow the money? Or should it dedicate itself to a place and figure it out from there?

Those are a few of the local stories we talked about in the year-end Technical.ly podcast (yep, we’re getting a head start), which features a roundtable look-back with Technical.ly’s five lead reporters and editorial director Christopher Wink, as well as a look at what community members thought the biggest stories were. The University City Science Center’s Kristen Fitch talked to us for that segment.

• Listen below, download the episode or subscribe to the Technical.ly Podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.

Also of note from the podcast: the “genderless, sexless, raceless” DCDino (essentially a person inside a cardboard velociraptor) that wants to get out the vote.

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And, while we’re in a reflective mood, here’s a look at the most-trafficked and most-shared Technical.ly Philly stories of 2014.

• City Council will make N. 3rd Street officially ‘N3rd Street’: The project to get N3rd Street recognized officially was the work of partners all along the corridor, including members of Indy Hall, Old City District and the Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association, said Danny Harvith, who helped lead the effort.
• Philadelphia School District releases employee salary data: It’s another release in a series of open data efforts, starting last April with the District’s budget data. “Our hope is that this will reduce the number of right to know requests around employee data,” said a spokesman.
• Why Philadelphia’s first Chief Data Officer quit: A conflict over property-tax data nudged Mark Headd out of city government. What should cities and open gov advocates learn from it?
• Gentrifying Philly: This map shows neighborhoods undergoing change: Can new construction point to a neighborhood’s revitalization? This mapping tool from Frankford developer Jim Smiley aims to explore that question.
• ‘Smart policing’ movement training Philly cops to be data scientists: Crime is down all across the board in Philadelphia, and the city’s top police officials say that’s in part because of the Police Department’s new police officer crime analysts.
• Prasanna Krishnan on being a mom in tech and working on a Bill Gates dream project: “I’d love to see more women in founding startup roles,” she said, adding that she thinks it’s happening, albeit slowly. Women need to see other women in these roles, she said. That helps the momentum.
• 10 years in Philly, why Tim Quirino is leaving for Facebook [Exit Interview]: Geekadelphia cofounder and P’unk Ave designer, Tim Quirino is a popular mainstay of Philadelphia’s young, college-educated creative class. On Friday, he’s leaving for a Silicon Valley design job with Facebook. Here’s why.