Just a quick reminder to everyone who’s been waiting until the last minute to try out IndyHall for free, on Saturday the free trial offer expires and memberships will take effect!
Drop-ins will still be allowed (and encouraged!) at our day rate of $25 without membership, $15 with basic membership.
Also, if you somehow forgot, we’re having a party on Saturday and you really, really should try to make it. We’ve got friends traveling from 3000 miles away to help ring in the inauguration of IndyHall, so if you’re in the area and not going to the shore (like you do every year), you should RSVP on Upcoming or Facebook, whichever you prefer. Or be safe and do both!
We’re ordering food and drinks and the more accurate count we have, the better chance you get to consume. Food and drinks are being sponsored by BarDiver (thanks Jay!), beer is being provided by Flying Dog Brewery, and WineLibrary is hooking us up with the goods to share a champagne toast! This is a classy event, for sure.
Oh, and lucky for you, bowling shoes aren’t required to take our Wii Bowling Alley for a spin!
And if you can’t make it to the office in the early evening for our Vidder/ForkYou.tv/WineLibraryTV event, we DO have the Old City Bar Crawl planned for afterwards where we will make our way from Sugar Mom’s to Lucy’s to Skinners and finally arrive at National Mechanics where we will be until they make us go home. I’ll do my best to keep the IndyHall twitter up to date so you know where we are if you’re joining mid-crawl.
Congratulations and thank you to everyone who’s gotten us through these first 2 and a half weeks, we’ve come so far and not without all of your support!
I’m not against the idea, but I do agree with Chris that at this stage of the game, its not the place for direction of our energy. It’s hard to keep individuals focused when there are big business intentions steering them. Instead, I’d like to cite a couple of variants of coworking with corporate involvement that we have already experienced that involved individuals on an individual basis, representing a larger company that they work for:
A month and change ago, at our last National MechanicsCream Cheese Session a couple of developers from Comcast Interactive Media came down to work for the day. Not only did they seem to have a really great, productive day but we (the usual suspects of the indyhall events) got to kick it with some incredibly talented people that are really stepping up the game for a company that has a pretty bad wrap in the Philadelphia creative community (and from my own personal experiences before going out on my own, it’s pretty clear that they know it). I think that this kind of game-changing activity, and the fact that Comcast let these developers work remote is awesome, and the fact that they worked from our event (prior to the opening of our office) instead of home or a cafe, was awesome. I look forward to being involved with them (and possibly more of the CIM team) in the future. This could be a great opportunity to break down some really longstanding barriers between the media behemoth that is Comcast, and the independent creative community.
This past Friday, 2 of my friends who work for another very large, local company spent the day at IndyHall’s new office. Adam Saslow, a software architect and Michael Bryman, a systems test engineer spent the day working remote for their employer, Motorola, based less than an hour outside of Center City Philadelphia. Again, this was a great opportunity for them to break the monotony of “corporate office life”, get some new scenery, new interaction, and possibly (hopefully) some inspiration that they can bring back to their office.
Adam and Michael started their day by joining a conference call in our conference room, and then continued their days working on the usual tasks that they would except they occasionally had a chance to break off into some social, but productive conversation.
One of our members, Jon Bettcher, interacted with them pretty heavily. Jon works for Reel FX based in Dallas, TX but works remote from home. He’s been working at IndyHall a few days a week since we installed desks and this to say:
Last Friday was a perfect example of why I’m so excited about Indyhall. I learned several new things just from the conversations back and forth, like the open platform initiative by the Motorola guys. I was even able to broadcast a few Ruby specific questions to the group, and received answers back quicker than I could have found them myself searching on Google. All of the conversations go a long way to making me feel more comfortable with the new development I’m doing for my company back in Dallas. Just the “buzz” surrounding Rails and the web development scene has greatly bolstered my confidence.
At the same time, on the other side of the city, there’s an office at UPenn’s Wharton School of Business that is under construction, with noise that is rendering the office an unproductive environment. Some workers are being allowed to work remote for a while, and rumor has it that some of them will be transplanting to IndyHall during the week leading up to our opening reception, representing another use case of the remote worker taking advantage of an environment like IndyHall.
These are just a couple of examples of how I’d like to see big(ger) businesses involved in coworking. Just like our organization has been built from the bottom up, putting the focus on the people first, I’d like to see the approach to corporate coworking done the same way: focusing on the people, first. Additional mutual benefits can be worked out along the way, once the basic human relationships have been established.
Mind you, that is not to say that we aren’t endlessly appreciative of every single individual and business who has chipped on on any level to support the opening of our space. I know I sound like a broken record but what else is new, the support has been overwhelming and we can’t thank you enough. Every penny, sofa, end table, mini fridge, and power strip, and printer is appreciated and helps us keep our user costs low, ultimately furthering the ability for people to get the best use out of our resources.
This isn’t the first time I’ve started a business without having business cards…and likely, it won’t be the last. But the time has come where having a trinket to hand to someone after telling them about our coworking space will be helpful, both to us and to the potential new member.
Inspired by the simple but elegant Emurse cards (which typically are in my pocket or on my desk at any given time, much love to Alex and Gavin), Johnny put together a simple, but elegant business card design based heavily on the IndyHall background he created weeks ago. I sent it off to the printer, and we should have a fat stack of glossy cards in our hands for everyone to grab from and share around. Here’s a sneak preview:
Since Indy Hall opened, there has been a flurry of activity in the space. Besides being a great place to work and be inspired, we were thinking it would be awesome to build a library with some great reference materials on design, business, startups, programming, etc.
Please view the list and comment on this post if you have any suggested additions or have any books / etc that you would like to donate yourself. Perhaps there are some of you out there who aren’t ready to climb aboard with a full membership and are looking for other ways to contribute to the community. If so, here’s your opportunity!
I’m personally kicking it off with a subscription to Fast Company, one of my favorite magazines.
Stay tuned for more ways to contribute and benefit from this great community that we are building together!
Or whatever gift-giving holiday you choose to participate in :-)
Here’s the scoop:
Months ago, I was introduced to a contact at Belkin by IndyHall supporter, and my good friend Chris Messina. It turns out that for many Barcamps, Belkin provides power and networking gear. They were interested in partnering with some coworking initiatives, and were looking at us. Jory (the contact) and I spoke a few times while IndyHall was in the “growth” period, and he said “keep me posted, and let me know when you’ve got an office!
Months passed, and quite obviously, we found ourselves at the aforementioned crossroads. I dropped Jory a line to see if they were still interested, and he said absolutely. We talked about the approximate size and number of desks, and together put together a list of things, mostly focusing on networking and power strips.
The next thing I knew…boxes started arriving. Lots, and lots, of boxes. The first box was a teaser…a couple of extra useful toys that Belkin tossed in, including a wireless USB print server, and some USB hubs. The next delivery was the motherload, though!
We can’t thank Belkin enough for this contribution to our new space. In return, along with evaluating their cool gear and giving them feedback, we’re going to be helping them put together packages on a per-desk basis. Essentially, they’ll be able to sell a “coworking special” for a certain number of desks, providing all of the gear that a coworking space would need for that number of desks. Way cool, and a way for us to give back to Belkin and the coworking community!
And a special thanks to Jory, also, for coordinating this for us. We really, really appreciate knowing that you get what we’re doing here!
Our memberships take effect on September 1st, but not before we show off our goodies! The official opening of IndyHall is going to go off with a bang…we’ve got some absolutely great stuff in the works!
On Saturday, September 1st, our office will be open during the afternoon for walkthroughs, tours, etc. From 5-7, we’ll be having an official “reception”, which will be punctuated by a LIVE taping of the Viddler.com MealToday giveaway. This will be co-hosted by Scott and Marisa from ForkYou.tv and Gary Vaynerchuck of winelibrarytv.com! The taping will take place from 6-6:30, so be sure to make it here by then to be part of the live studio audience.
We also have Bardiver.com’s Jay Graves flying in from Denver to sponsor a bar crawl. You can go to BarDiver Philly, sign up for an account, and post your favorite bars. We’ll be picking bars for the crawl from bars YOU submit! The crawl will start when we’re done taping Viddler’s giveaway, and end at our own neighborhood watering hole, National Mechanics to continue the socialization.
We also have some special guests traveling quite some distance for our opening, so be sure to come out to give them a friendly “City of Brotherly Love” welcome.
We do have limited space in the IndyHall office so please RSVP!
And don’t forget, you can stop by and work for the day for FREE until our opening, too!
A reporter and photographer spent several hours at IndyHall this past Wednesday and the product of their work hit newsstands this morning…we’ve got a bunch of printed copies of the biz section of Sunday’s Philadelphia Inquirer but if you’re not near a copy (or your newsstand doesnt carry it) you can read it here! If you do grab a copy, we’re on the front AND back page of the business section.
Bart and I shot a little video earlier this week and I finally figured out how to cut together some stuff in iMovieHD.
Check it out, and leave comments/tags! Oh…sorry about the fact that I’m talking crazy-fast…I’ve been drinking a LOT of coffee!
Music used without permission from Huey Lewis and the News, and Philadelphia’s own IKE. If Huey or IKE wants, I’ll take it out. But I love both of them so I hope not.
I’ll be missing it since I’m waiting for the DSL to be installed at IndyHall but I encourage everyone to go! We had 12 or 13 people last time, and had a really great time; you can watch a little video!
If you can, come by IndyHall tomorrow (remember, it’s free until September 1st) and help us christen the new broadband! If you can’t make it tomorrow, we’ll continue to be open every day except sundays (I gotta clean MY house).
We’ve had some awesome attendance for the last few days, and the Philadelphia Inquirer spent several hours here yesterday taking pictures and interviewing myself and the other members. At the end of the day, the reporter remarked about what a good time she had. SWEET!
Also, don’t forget Dave Speers’ brainstorming session tomorrow night from7-9, and then drinks at Nat’l Mechanics. I expect to see some of you from the time the sun comes up until long after the sun goes down!!!!
Yesterday there were a couple of us working on the floor until I got to run to IKEA in the evening. With the help of Jason Tremblay, we loaded up a Philly Car Share car with 15 desks and a couple of chairs to test out. Back to the space, Bart, Jason and myself unloaded the car and went to work putting together the first couple of desks.
There are currently 6 desks assembled and another 9 waiting the hands of a drill-master…that drill master could be you! We’re done building desks…for now. We have 14 built (one had a damaged leg) and will be getting more pending turnout and attendance of the workspace. Our awesome upstairs neighbors are letting us borrow their wifi until Speakeasy comes on Friday to finish the commercial DSL installation. The final step will be the installation of the power and wifi gear provided by our friends at Belkin, and that gear should be here sometime this week.
We’re working hard to put everything else together, too…everything from whiteboards and trash cans to filing and storage and a pimped out conference room!
Our first official event is still on for this friday, but you’re welcome to stop by anytime to check the space out. We won’t be charging for use of workspace until September 1st, so this is your chance to see if we’re all we say we are!
Just drop us a note (here in the comments, or through our handy contact form) to let us know you’re coming down. No guarantees on chairs right now if a LOT of people show up, but we’ve got a bunch of new seating options showing up in the next week (chairs, sofas, etc). Best bet is to give us that bit of advanced notice so we can plan accordingly.
Bart and I are here, so come say hi! Oh, and bring coffee, we like coffee and don’t have a pot quite yet!
