Mayor Jim Kenney (right) interviewed by Technical.ly cofounder Christopher Wink at the Mayoral Tech Town Hall at PHL Next Stage Med in University City. (credit: Ian Bush)

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — Technology is far from a panacea, but it has the potential to impact poverty in Philadelphia. That’s the assessment of Mayor Jim Kenney, who spoke at a Philly Tech Week event Monday morning in University City.

Digital learning in pre-K and at playgrounds. Web access and coding workshops in rec centers and libraries. Technology, says the mayor, needs to be where the kids are.

“Because that’s where they’ll go,” Kenney said. “You can’t expect them to find it themselves — you have to bring it to them, because a lot of our neighborhoods, sad to say, are struggling and people who are living there are wonderful people but they happen to be poor.”

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Another priority, Kenney says, must be outreach by the tech sector to underrepresented groups.

“One of the ideas we’re working on now and trying to flesh out is a tech conference next year that’s focused on people of color,” he said.

The mayor wants to call it the North Star Conference, an allusion to Frederick Douglass’ anti-slavery newspaper that he says he’s using to signify the march toward economic freedom.

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Kenney also references the fight over immigration reform in keeping tech innovators from being forced out of town — or, fearing federal crackdown, not coming to Philadelphia in the first place.

“This has to be an open, progressive, welcoming city, or we’re not going to be successful,” the mayor said. “If you think you can play both sides of that street by rounding up people and handing them over to the federal government and you think that’s going to be helpful to you — it’s not going to be. It’s going to give us a bad reputation with people who really are smart and want to live in cities and want to start up businesses and want to employ people.”