Tag: Academy of Natural Sciences

No. 17 • 2020-09-09

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Back to School

The 2020 B.PHL Innovation Festival is next week, Sept. 15-17.  Given the pandemic, this second year of B.PHL is entirely online and registration is free(!).  The program celebrates innovation in all its forms (technology, arts & entertainment, education, social justice, healthcare, and more) and features local leaders as well as global celebrities, like Pitbull, Nick Offerman, and Issa Rae.

Several events feature Drexel presenters:

  • A Night at the Museum(s), featuring Scott Cooper, CEO of the Academy of Natural Sciences with Clay Catongo, Penn Museum.
  • By Law, By Love – features Angel Hogan, department manager in the LeBow College of Business and current Drexel MFA student, presenting her short documentary about a boy’s quest to find his family after growing up in foster care (part of the B. PHL Film Fest).
  • Put Down Your Pencils: The 2020 Class(zoom), a conversation with Drexel President John Fry and U. Penn Provost Wendell Pritchett.

I am co-hosting an event with Jessica Zweig, Program Director of Play On Philly, to kick off our new panel mini-series, Creative Conversations for a Changing World. These discussions will focus on how arts and education organizations are innovating through the pandemic with organizational leaders from some of Philadelphia’s premier institutions. We’ll hear from those who are thinking in and out of the box about new ways of performing, learning, and sharing in the era of social distancing. Our kickoff event features an All-Star panel:

Our panel is Tuesday. September 15, 4pm (B.PHL festival registration is required, but it’s free!)  Of course, anyone can tune in… you don’t have to be in Philly. Please share the event info with anyone who’s interested, and also be sure to check out the rest of the B.PHL program for other great sessions. I hope to “see” you Tuesday at 4pm!

Also, pre-register below for our future series events below.  Mark your calendars!

(Socially) Distant Creations

  • The Global Armed Man [Stay at Home Choir] 5000 singers from 74 countries contributed to this musical celebration of the 20th anniversary of the premiere Sir Karl Jenkins’ The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace. The virtual mashup combines live concert footage from 2018 with at home recordings of thousands of singers.
  • Virtual POP [Play On Philly] Registration is open for the incredible local youth music instruction program’s 10th Anniversary year. Instruction begins virtually on Oct. 5.
  • Online Art History Classes [Barnes Foundation] An impressive collection of topics, each consisting of 4 weekly sessions this Fall.
  • Virtual Gallery [Rittenhouse Square Fine Art Show] Featuring works from 101 artists from the US and Canada (Sept. 10-13).
  • Philadelphia Fringe Festival 2020 [Fringe Arts] Another reminder of the amazing all-virtual Fringe lineup this year (Sept. 10-Oct. 4).
  • Time Flies [Apple] The company’s next round of products will be announced in a virtual event (Sept. 15 at 1pm ET). Expect a new Apple Watch and new iPads.

What I’m creating

Virtual Chorister, my iOS app to help musicians participate in virtual collaboration projects has surpassed 2000 downloads! And don’t let the name fool you… it’s for instrumentalists, too! The latest update lets you also load guide videos from cloud services (Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, etc.) and adds support for Bluetooth headphones. An update coming soon will add other requested features.

Another frequent request is for an Android version. Unfortunately, that’s an entirely different development process that I don’t have experience with (essentially writing an entirely new app), but I’m thinking about it…