The US Northeast is one of the densest innovation hubs in the world

Technology has always been a way to open doors, even a crack. Today, as the fourth annual Philly Tech Week Presented by AT&T officially it beginslet's celebrate how it can help us drive identity building for the North East region of the country.

Generation-defining communication platforms and tools that help us discover and improve and better understand our world have taken us to new worlds and better connected us to old ones. Technology has created wealth and helped us escape poverty. Not for everyone, not for most, but it has certainly shown the way.

Because of the idealism that infuses innovation, there must be an inclusiveness at the core of any community of people that aims to explore and exploit technology, whatever that technology may be at a given time. Merit states are heady things to build, but surely we can aspire to strike that balance between welcoming all the new faces that fall upon our digital shores and celebrating the proud racial character of those we know.

Let's use and promote and recognize the local leaders and companies and groups that define what it means to be from Philadelphia. But let us also recognize the broader narrative by which we will be defined.

Global consciousness is not stupid and American exceptionalism is not new, but add to your spirit an appreciation for the rapidly defined mega-region of which Philadelphia is a center.

From at least Boston to Washington, with Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore in between (Delaware and New Jersey to boot), the United States' Northeast Corridor is one of the densest, most populous, best-traveled innovation hubs in the world. world he has ever met. Individually, we all build creative communities that reshape how we want to define ourselves. Together, we could lead the next century of ideas at a time when the world is struggling to join in celebrating them.

This momentary spotlight on the technology and business communities can be an opportunity to bring us all together emotionally in a way that Amtrak trains help us to do physically. Put aside the sports tracks and the food preferences and the stereotypes and the jokes and think about how many customers and clients and investors and friends we have in this hallway.

We can be part of something bigger than ourselves. Technology can bring us together.

It's that kind of thinking that the fourth annual Philly Tech Week presented by AT&T hopes to create. The kind of thinking that prides itself on local spirit and civic determination that inspires us to uplift our neighbors while also looking to learn from all the best ideas that can be convened, developed and delivered.

At the same time that digital technology becomes less of a domain and more of a background to any industry we've ever known, then we should build our cities, one of humanity's best innovation and idea incubators, and break our borders, without losing love for wherever we call home.

There will always be a Philadelphia identity, just as there will always be experts who know how the plumbing of our digital infrastructure works. But as we share ideas during this celebration of new ideas in Philadelphia, let's remember that we're not competing with another place, we're competing with smaller versions of who we can be.

Technical means