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Let others focus on election day tomorrow or dread the employment report coming up on Friday.
I’m looking forward to a week of events that celebrate entrepreneurship. Starting Tuesday, the two-day Mid-Atlantic Capital Conference at the Convention Center is expected to attract 1,000 people to learn about 40 area companies, including TerraCycle Inc., of Trenton, and iPipeline Inc., of Exton.
More intriguing is what’s happening on the University of Pennsylvania campus that celebrates ideas at a much earlier stage. It’s Innovation Week at the Weiss Tech House, a student-run organization that’s proof a little money, a little structure and a lot of teamwork can produce amazing things, including new companies.
We all remember that guy in college who sold dormroom carpets out of his trunk. Well, this technology-steeped generation has grander ambitions.
Begun in May 2003, the Weiss Tech House at 33d and Walnut Streets began as a 3,000-square-foot space where Penn undergraduates could pursue their ideas. The ground floor is called the lab, but it’s more like a workshop with paint sprayer, band saw, drill press and other tools.
Upstairs are conference rooms outfitted, not with cocktail napkins on which to sketch ideas, but whiteboards, including one that runs wall-to-wall and was partly filled with hieroglyphic-like scribbling in brown marker on the day I visited.
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