Philly Tech Week 2012 officially kicks off with presentations from Brigitte Daniel, Adel Ebeid, and Rob Wonderling

With a morning breakfast and presentations from three Philadelphia technology leaders, Philly Tech Week presented by AT&T is officially underway.

Nearly 100 attendees arrived at WHYY at 8:30 a.m. to watch Wilco Electronic Systems Executive Vice President Brigitte Daniel, City of Philadelphia Chief Innovation Officer Adel Ebeid, Chamber of Commerce CEO Rob Wonderling and Technically Philly kick off a solid week of more than 80 technology events.

After introductions made Technically Philly co-founder Christopher Wink, Daniel spoke about the progress Philadelphia has made in bridging the digital divide and spoke of what the technology community still must to do to make computing and broadband accessible to all of Philadelphia’s citizens.

“On the other side of the digital divide, on the other side of what we’re doing, it’s not all digits and ones and zeros and code, but it’s people,” Daniel said in her presentation.

Here’s video of her presentation:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgM8d31aD1A]

Ebeid spoke about his goals for modernizing the city, including improving systems and bringing citizens closer to government processes:

“What we’re doing is we’re really changing the whole [idea that] innovation is not one person or one entity, innovation is enabling you to come up with a framework for liberating data that allows innovation to happen just about anywhere by anyone. And I really believe in that,” Ebeid told the audience.

Here is video of his talk:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt0aV9C8BKU]

Wonderling spoke about the history of entrepreneurship in Philadelphia and how that history has a set a precedent for successful ideas driving the local economy.

“The future of this economy in this Greater Philadelphia region will be driven by individuals in this room. Who you connect with across the Greater Philadelphia region represent 1.2 million citizens and more broadly across the globe. Because not only do you have a great idea and an entrepreneurial spirit, but there is an ever growing web of networks that will propel and propel and propel you forward to your dreams and aspirations.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39a7nca_-9Q]