Latest news with #Wink
USA Today
09-06-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Michigan football makes strong case to 4-star LB Nick Abrams in exclusive visit interview
Michigan football makes strong case to 4-star LB Nick Abrams in exclusive visit interview Michigan football is coming off of a big recruiting weekend where it's starting to make moves for some of its top targets on the board for the 2026 class. One of those targets is Owings Mills (Md.) McDonogh School four-star linebacker Nick Abrams II. Abrams is being courted by some of the best of the best as it pertains to schools across college football. Oregon, Alabama, and Georgia loom large, but he got another chance to take in Ann Arbor and all the Wolverines have to offer. Rated highest by On3, he's listed as the No. 163 player in the country, regardless of position, as well as the eighth-best linebacker and fifth-rated player from the state of Maryland. Coming off of his official visit (he also visited Ann Arbor unofficially on April 12), Abrams spoke with WolverinesWire about his time with the staff and his experience in general. Here is everything he had to say. What were your big takeaways from visiting Ann Arbor this weekend? Yeah, the visit was great, everyone was super welcoming. I think from the get-go, they let me know how much of a priority my family and I are. It was great just getting a lot of our questions answered, talking with Coach B.J., being able to continue to see how I would fit in the defense. And then talking with Coach Wink, how his system is great for linebackers, the versatility, the chess pieces, how they're able to be moved around. And then I think another important part was talking with Coach Sherrone Moore, just being able to see his vision, and then see how he sees me in that vision and that light, and how they kind of used a high praise saying that I could be the face of their defense. So it was important to get those questions answered and talk with them and really get a grasp of how interested they are in me and my family. How appealing is that to you to hear that you could be the face of the defense? And given Wink Martindale and his system and scheme and his experience, how much does the idea move the needle? Yeah, so I think it's very appealing to hear what they had to say. Obviously, in this new world of college football, your brand is everything. So just the fact that they see me in the light where I could head one of the best programs of all time in college football. So that's some high praise that kind of humbles me. And then playing for Coach Wink is something that is kind of appealing, his ability to be able to coach the best. He said he's coached 20 years in the NFL and then 20 years of high school and college. He's won a Super Bowl ring. He's coached probably the greatest linebacker of all time. So like, just that, knowing that and seeing and using what he's teaching every single day, it actually is very appealing to me. You're a big academic guy, too, right? How much time do they spend on showing you the academic side of Michigan? What did you learn kind of coming out of the visit from an academic perspective? Yeah, so they, I think Michigan speaks for itself. They didn't really have to sell anything to academics. You kind of just know coming in that you're going to get a great education. You're going to be at the top of the top. Your classmates are going to be probably CEOs of companies or their parents are going to be CEOs of companies, you know. So they didn't really have to sell that point at all during the visit. You kind of just go into it knowing that when you go to Michigan, you're going to a high academic school, you're going to one of the best universities in the country and you're going to be able to have a major that's going to take you wherever you want to go. Do you know what you want to study at the next level? Yeah, I want to study either finance or real estate. We kind of walked into the Ross School of Business on my unofficial visit a couple of months ago. We kind of did a more deep dive into academics at the Ross School to see what we saw in some of the buildings, some of the classrooms, and stuff, so, but yeah. What was something that you learned that maybe you didn't know going in? To be honest, I didn't really learn a whole lot more. I think they did a great job on my unofficial visit. Really just getting all the introduction stuff, and really just doing a great job covering everything that they need to cover in terms of our questions that need to be answered. It was more just reassurance on my end, just being able to, seeing, OK, yeah, this is the place I remember. I remember all this. I think one thing that I definitely was intrigued about was the culture that they, and the player led culture they have, being able to make suggestions during the game plan and how everything's -- yes, it's not going to be all player led, but they have a lot of say and they know what they want in their locker room and stuff like that. So a lot of our questions were more so answered. I really didn't learn a lot of stuff new. It was just being reassured that this is a program that I could see myself at. When it comes time to make your decision, what are the factors that you're going to be weighing the most heavily between your finalists? Yeah. So I think a big thing is the coaching, the development -- people throw that term around, but really just looking at the track record and how my position as able to put guys in the league, whether they're the highly recruited or they're not highly recruited. Just their consistency when it comes to that. And I think another thing is the culture, the people I'm going to be around, am I able to be myself? Am I able to, you know, maximize my potential, not only on the field, but as a person at the school And then kind of the connections. I think at every school, you're going to have connections, every school is going to have someone, but like what school is going to put in that extra effort to be able to -- you ask for something, you want to get into something new and are they going to be able to provide that for you? So just those kind of things, and then kind of a family atmosphere as well. I want a school where it's kind of player led, where a lot of the locker room, the players have a good say in terms of just ideas and then on the game plan, but then also we're able to be guided by the coach where he's not just a total dictatorship, but wherever he says goes. Do you have an idea of when you want to make your decision? Yeah, I'm committing on July 16th.
Technical.ly
07-05-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
15 years in, Philly Tech Week still brings the city's tech scene together
2025 marks 15 years of the Philly tech ecosystem coming together for Philly Tech Week — and a lot has changed since that first scrappy conference was announced in 2010. The 15th annual Philly Tech Week (PTW) started on Monday, kicking off over 40 tech and innovation-themed events throughout the city. Today, the celebration is presented by Comcast and hosted by 1Philadelphia, and has turned into a citywide collaborative effort. But it began under as a way for orgs from different sectors and sizes to get to know each other, cofounder and CEO, Chris Wink said. While it'll continue to change, Wink said, the ethos of community gathering that brought innovators and technologists together from the start should remain at the heart of it. So far, it's met that goal, but what that looks like going forward will have to keep evolving to meet the needs of the participants, according to its leaders. 'Philadelphia needed the last 15 years of Philly Tech Week,' Wink said. 'I'm not sure if Philadelphia needs another 15 years of the same, but Philadelphia absolutely needs a place where its entrepreneurship, tech and innovation community comes together.' People across sectors and throughout the region come out to engage with the ecosystem, and 2025 is no exception. Events like the Department of Commerce's Level Up Your Pitch workshop, Out in Tech Philly's PTW Mixer and Builders Conference are happening throughout the city until May 10. kicked it off, but PTW belongs to the entire ecosystem founders, Wink, Brian James Kirk and Sean Blanda, hosted the first PTW in 2011, taking inspiration from the annual beer festival Philly Beer Week and joining the 2010s trend of cities hosting startup weeks. They found through their early reporting that traditional institutions like the Chamber of Commerce and big corporations were not connected to tech meetup groups and the startup community, Wink said. These groups were all relevant to the ecosystem, but they weren't connected, he said. The idea was that the city would be more powerful as a collective than as individuals. 'It was more about people who liked each other, coming from very different jobs,' Wink said. 'It's not an industry at that point. It's a community.' It wasn't until 2013 that PTW started to hit its stride. Event attendance doubled, people recognized the format, and they started to lean into the 'spectacle' of the week, Wink said. That year, Drexel University professor Frank Lee organized 'Pong on the Cira Center,' setting a world record for the largest architectural video game display. The goal of having many different organizations host a variety of events across the city was coming to fruition and the community calendar of events was keeping existing stakeholders engaged while also bringing in new people, Wink said. 'Philly Tech Week mattered because we established the format,' Wink said. 'The idea of having a week of events related at all to this topic is ours first.' From a wider lens, PTW puts a spotlight on the potential of Philly's tech and innovation community, Danae Mobley, executive director of 1Philadelphia and CEO of Coded By, said. The legacy of PTW is the collaboration among the community and the people who still care about coming together under a shared vision, she said. 'We've seen the evolution of [PTW],' Mobley said. 'While the people may have changed, I don't think the energy or the sentiment behind wanting Philly to succeed as a tech market has changed.' Bringing the city together and catching the mayor's attention Many memorable and impactful tech moments happened at PTW over its first 10 years. Local data project OpenDataPhilly launched at the very first Philly Tech Week's opening event, providing a resource for Philadelphians to access publicly available data. 'It was a great rollout of an open data catalog for and by a community,' Robert Cheetham, founder of software company Azavea, told The following year, Mayor Michael Nutter signed an executive order to establish an Open Data Policy for the City of Philadelphia. The city's open data program went on to see a lot of progress over the last decade, but the project has lost momentum over the last few years. PTW has also broken more than one world record, once again for the largest architectural video game display. Drexel's Lee returned in 2014 to organize games of Tetris on the Cira Center that year. This event is a favorite PTW memory for Mobley. Now that 1Philadelphia runs PTW, the memory feels like a full circle moment, she said. 'I thought that that was just so amazing, that there were people that just had that spirit of ingenuity and playfulness and fun around something that brought the city together,' she said. 1Philadelphia takes over to make PTW part of its mission Last year, began the process of handing PTW off to 1Philadelphia, and the org is fully hosting this year's lineup of events. 1Philadelphia, an initiative of tech education nonprofit Coded by, launched in 2020. Coded by had always participated in PTW and the org saw how it brought the community together, according to Mobley. It made sense to get more involved with Philly Tech Week because of 1Philadelphia's mission to bring stakeholders together and create a more equitable tech ecosystem in Philly, she said. 'Because of the work that we were doing as a convener with some of our signature events,' Mobley said. 'We really wanted to see how we could come in and support and bolster this long-standing tradition of a great innovation festival that happens in Philadelphia.' For 1Philadelphia's takeover made sense, too. Wink said he's been thinking about handing the reins to someone else since 2019, but the pivot to online celebrations for its 10th anniversary stalled the process of searching for the next leader. Last year was a transition period. 1Philadelphia cohosted Philly Tech Week alongside helping to organize the community calendar, contributing to the marketing and hosting its own events. This year, the org is ready to fully take over coordinating PTW. As for what's next, it's up to the community that rallies around PTW each year. 'Philly Tech Week is for everyone,' Mobley said. 'It is not the ownership of one entity.' Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.
Technical.ly
06-05-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
Why every city has a ‘startup week' now — and whether they should
When first launched Philly Tech Week 15 years ago, the logic was straightforward: gather scattered entrepreneurs and technologists together, put the city on the map, and throw a few great parties along the way. A decade and a half later, nearly every US city with entrepreneurial aspirations seems to host a version of a 'startup week.' But as economic conditions, work habits and generational preferences shift, some are reevaluating whether the week-long event model is still effective — or necessary. 'The 'week' was proof that a city had arrived,' said Brian Brackeen, general partner at Lightship Capital and co-organizer of Black Tech Week, a national conference hosted since 2014. 'You had enough happening to fill multiple days.' The model flourished because it allowed cities to showcase a critical mass of entrepreneurial activity while providing flexible attendance options. 'If someone couldn't make Thursday or Friday, they could still attend events earlier in the week,' said Maria Underwood, a veteran ecosystem builder based in Birmingham, Alabama, which hosts the multi-day founded in 2015. Victor Hwang, founder of entrepreneur advocacy network Right to Start, believes a full week's slate of events encourages more local partnerships. Multiple groups could host their own gatherings under the larger banner, he said, relieving pressure from a single organizer and fostering greater community participation. Yet some old-school supporters — including CEO Chris Wink, who was instrumental in creating the original Philadelphia model — are skeptical the format still fits. 'Funding isn't there anymore to sponsor beer-soaked warehouse parties,' Wink said. He described the era of 'throwing 300-person parties subsidized by private equity firms' as 'insane by today's standards.' Instead, Wink said, founders now emphasize business value, intentional connections and efficiency in events — priorities that seem to clash with sprawling multi-day schedules. 'Happy hours are a dime a dozen' Brackeen, of Lightship Capital, echoed this shift toward intentionality. Black Tech Week, for example, has evolved to include highly structured investor-founder matchmaking sessions and corporate 'biz-dev days,'maximizing direct business outcomes rather than casual networking. Birmingham's Underwood agreed. 'Happy hours are a dime a dozen,' She said. 'The events that will sustain are ones creating intentional, strategic connections for founders.' Economic realities have also changed. CEO Wink cited the post-pandemic reevaluation of work-life balance and tighter capital environments as reasons why the sprawling event model might no longer be economically sustainable — or desirable. Still, 'weeks' remain valuable to emerging ecosystems. 'There's still a 26-year-old who was 12 when you first threw those parties,' Brackeen reminded Wink. 'They deserve their chance to experience it, too.' Though some places are still launching 'week'-themed editions — DC Tech Week was new on the scene last year, offering two dozen events across several days in the nation's capital — a rising trend is the startup 'weekend' instead. That's the branding for a program offered by Techstars, which partners on the three-day events in cities from Pittsburgh to New Orleans to Rome and Sao Paulo.. Ultimately, ecosystem leaders agree that while the week model once signaled vibrancy and ambition, its future might lie in hybrid, focused programming emphasizing specific business outcomes over sheer volume of activity. 'The vibe has shifted from 'cool and fun' to practical resilience,' Hwang said. 'People still care, but they care differently.'
Business Mayor
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Mayor
Prize crossword No 29,685
1 Garment with knitted top taken in by 5 down neighbour (3,5) 1 across. Garment with knitted top taken in by 5 down neighbour. 3 letters and 5 letters. 6 Recovered well, sparkle's back after a bug (6) 6 across. Recovered well, sparkle's back after a bug. 6 letters. 9 Attention-seeker in energetic lover, more sentimental (6) 9 across. Attention-seeker in energetic lover, more sentimental. 6 letters. 10 Exceptional currency (8) 10 across. Exceptional currency. 8 letters. 11 Youth having organised most of trek, pony brought in? (9) 11 across. Youth having organised most of trek, pony brought in? 9 letters. 13 Wink is dodgy when confronted by judge (5) 13 across. Wink is dodgy when confronted by judge. 5 letters. 15 Ending in clink after venture backfiring, fill up again (6) 15 across. Ending in clink after venture backfiring, fill up again. 6 letters. 17 5 down notable in 'beastly couple' as observed from the far right? (6) 17 across. 5 down notable in 'beastly couple' as observed from the far right? 6 letters. 18 Capitalist and interventionist with company investing in gas (6) 18 across. Capitalist and interventionist with company investing in gas. 6 letters. 19 Have on end (4,2) 19 across. Have on end. 4 letters and 2 letters. 21 East 5 down town in Battle, we surmise (5) 21 across. East 5 down town in Battle, we surmise. 5 letters. 22 Ridicule can go either way, reportedly, for historical character (3,6) 22 across. Ridicule can go either way, reportedly, for historical character. 3 letters and 6 letters. 25, 3 5 down event charging partner with freethinking power (8,5) 25 across, 3 across. 5 down event charging partner with freethinking power. 8 letters and 5 letters. 26 European city where nothing left, heading for oblivion (6) 26 across. European city where nothing left, heading for oblivion. 6 letters. 28 Strangely repulsive, how 5 down town sounds to a minibeast? (6) 28 across. Strangely repulsive, how 5 down town sounds to a minibeast? 6 letters. 29 That is written into draft I surprisingly endorsed (8) 29 across. That is written into draft I surprisingly endorsed. 8 letters.
Times
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Wink Martindale obituary: American TV game show host
Sometimes childhood names stick and so it was with Wink Martindale. In infancy, a young playmate had trouble saying his given name, Winston, and it came out as 'Winkie'. Shortened to Wink, he went on to use the name on his Top Ten hit Deck of Cards and throughout his long career as the king of American television game shows — with just one exception. When he took over his first in 1964, hosting NBC's What's This Song? the network decided 'Wink' sounded juvenile and billed him as Win Martindale. Common sense prevailed and for the 20 further game shows he went on to host he reverted to Wink. He joked that the name had served him well but that as long as he was
