Independents Hall

Independents Hall

This Is The Way Philly Does Coworking

• home
• about
• locate
• pricing
• wiki
• contact

For anyone in the office yesterday, today, or tomorrow, there is an unusual lack of…well…Alex. :-)

Most of you know that I’ve been at the office (along with Bart) pretty much every day since we’ve opened. Well, I’m not out of the office for no good reason…today, I’m attending BlogOrlando along with a handful of others from the Philly crew, as well as a bunch of friends that I made at BlogPhiladelphia.

I’m going to be playing wingman for my buddy Alex Rudloff (who is also cool enough to pick me up at the airport AND let me couchsurf at his place), and is one of the social media leaders down here who are heading up a coworking effort. Alex will be leading session on that at 11:10am today. From catching up with him on the “state of affairs” yesterday, it sounds like O-town has a lot of the same challenges that Philadelphia had, and still has, to overcome some of the social barriers keeping its workers and social scene apart. I’m really excited to hear first hand what people are up to down here, and what kinds of things they are trying to do to make it better…and with any luck, together, we’ll come up with a few new things that BOTH of our cities can benefit from!

There was a really good piece in the Orlando Sentinal about what’s going on down here, with a little quote from me about how coworking is heavily populated by people making a living doing what they love. That one’s for you, Speers.

One last bit: huge thanks to BlogOrlando host Josh Hallett for a) putting together what is shaping up to be quite a series of sessions and b) yesterday’s NASA and Universal City Walk festivities. It was a great time, and a really fun opportunity for some of us early arrivers to get acquainted with each other.

Tags: blogorlando, alex rudloff, josh hallett, social scene, orlando, coworking

Tara Hunt has kicked off a project she’s calling “Spread the Love”. I’ve been following it closely and thinking about how its core values can be better applied to the things I’m involved with, and wanted to put some of those thoughts down here.

There’s been some discussion recently about the recent press that IndyHall has received. Of course, we’re proud of our office and talk to anyone about what we’re doing here, and what’s going on in the world of coworking outside of IndyHall. Unfortunately, some misplaced journalistic intention has stirred up some bad juju…so I wanted to clear the air.

Whenever I speak to someone about Independents Hall, I try my hardest to make it clear that we didn’t originate this concept, and that this kind of thing CAN and IS going on all over the world. In some settings, I tell the more personal story of how we got the crew together, what motions we went through, and how we arrived at sharing an office. I think that story is extremely important to show that from nothing, something can form, and that community is the most effective (and fun!) way I’ve found to do it.

The downside with telling that story is that it makes it difficult for the writer to choose focus. Are they here to interview about Independents Hall (or whatever space they are interviewing) and how it came to be, or are they here to interview about the coworking concept from the level where they can see EVERYTHING that is going on around the world. Honestly, I think the interview is easier to write and thats why they choose that one. I can count, on one hand, the number of articles that have been written that focus on the coworking movement rather than any specific space (or spaces). That leaves it up to the interviewer to put some focus back on the community that supported them, and maybe I haven’t done as good of a job as I could have.

This morning we had a piece published on one of my FAVORITE blogs, Freelance Switch. There is a lot of traffic coming to the site this morning from that article, and I wanted to post a few points of clarification, some additional links, as well as provide some resources that I’ve been providing to people who’ve emailed me personally to ask more:

• I never made it to San Francisco…the “interview” was 100% remote. I imagine my jealousy of the west coast would have multiplied had I actually made it over there to hang out with the crew that I had become so close with (via the web), and I may have not ever come back :-).
  Some of them have recently made the voyage cross-country to visit me so I intend to return the favor very soon to see what west-coast coworking feels like. The biggest thing that I drew from their experiences that they published were the core values of community, collaboration, openness, and sustainability. Without them, it was tough to consider ourselves a *true* coworking space.
• Coworking is a starfish organization and we’re just one leg of that starfish. Independents Hall is not a franchise. Neither is coworking. It’s a community driven sharing of experiences and knowledge that allows the movement to grow leaps and bounds beyond what it could if it had hard-defined leadership and rules. Instead, we rely on the core values listed above to establish an organizational ring around the global entities that make up the coworking movement. If you want to cowork in your area, check the wiki, find out who else is posting on the google group, or go to the local cafe and see who’s working. “Roll your own” if you can’t find someone else doing it. Which brings me to….
• The Cream Cheese Sessions were inspired by Jelly in NYC. Amit Gupta and I have been discussing ways to impart the value of Jelly/Cream Cheese/whatever you want to call your semi-ad-hoc-work-together-session on others. These events are one of the best ways to get your local coworking in my opinion. They’re low cost (if not free), easy to organize, and a lot of fun. Amit has started a “Jelly Organizers” group where we hope to help start the discussion about how to get your own local event off the ground. We’d like to, in time, field more specific questions in the form of a podcast…but that’s down the road.
• The P’unk Ave crew who hosts and runs Junto helped forged the path in a huge way. Since the first day that Alex Gilbert mentioned the idea, it was clear how important this could be. Watching the event grow, flourish and mature from “4 people in the middle of a snowstorm” to dozens of people who come out monthly to embrace a topic and share their ideas has been inspiring, and I’m proud to have been a part of it. Geoff, Rick, and Alex G. provide and lead this event that uses a historical venue (I don’t mean their shop, though it is beautiful, but the format of Junto) to promote the true purpose of what we as a community wanted to accomplish. Without Junto, there likely wouldn’t BE an Independents Hall. We think (and hope) Ben Franklin would be proud.

I’m feeling guilty about some of the “me me me” type of stuff that’s been published…and I can’t put all of the blame on the writers. It’s admittedly hard to tell a story from a neutral standpoint, especially a story I’m so passionate about, and I definitely could be doing a better job of leading journalists in the right direction. The promotion of the space that we’ve opened here has been wonderful and of course we appreciate every place that has written about us or included a link to our website. But there are more people, the people I’ve listed above and many more, who deserve attention too.

I just want it to be crystal clear that we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for more people than I can count, or can list, or probably even know of. I don’t want anyone to think that I’ve been opportunistic, because I really am passionate about both this local community that drives IndyHall as well as supporting the coworking spaces that are opening up all over the world. Remember, we’re just one small leg of the starfish.

I’ve spoken to Geoff about this matter and moving forward, we’re going to request that reporters interview a larger census of the community whenever they write about us. We think this is a fair opportunity to “spread the love”. If you have other ideas on ways to better future interviews and remove opportunity for a skewed story, please, let us know in the comments.

A couple of months back myself and a couple other coworking community leaders put our heads together and came up with a panel topic for the annual SXSW Interactive Festival.

The topic is “Coworking and the Evolution of the Web Worker“, and is to feature myself, Patrick Tanguay of coworking Montreal, Eva Schweber of Cubespace in Portland, Oregon, an undetermined representative of coworking in San Francisco (we have some ideas but are waiting for someone to shout out!), and the one and only Brian Oberkirch as a moderator.

Panel voting and commenting closes in less than 48 hours! 

We need your love, so head on over to the panel picker, and vote and comment for us if you haven’t already.

Oh, and hit up some of the others, too. There’s over 700 to choose from, so see if anything else strikes your fancy.

Thanks, and see everyone in Austin!

Tags: indyhall, independents hall, coworking, austin, SXSW, SXSWi, SXSWi08, panel, web worker, patrick tanguay, eva schweber, brian oberkirch, alex hillman

Our very own Jason Tremblay and Dave Speers have been working diligently on an event to highlight another great Philadelphia industry: food! One of their partners/projects, WCDish.com, is holding a Restaurant Festival in West Chester this Sunday.

I’m going to do my best to make it out (anybody want to carpool? Philly Car Share? Mini Cooper/Miata convertable?), and hope to see some other folks from our crew there to support Dave and Jason, as well as the restaurateurs who are coming out to sample their wares.

The weather forecast is looking ideal, and there will be tons of great food to try. If you can make it out, be sure to drop by to see Jason and Dave at the corner of Gay St. and High St to say “hi”, as they’ll be manning the WCDish.com booth.

More info about the event can be found at: http://www.wcdish.com/restaurantfestival/

Tags: jason tremblay, david speers, west chester, chester county, philadelphia, wcdish, restaurant festival, philly car share

Recently, Citizen Agency/Citizen Space put together their 4 pillars of coworking:

1. Collaboration
2. Openness
3. Community
4. Sustainability

Tara mentioned that sustainability may be unique to them, and were met with a flurry of “no, we’re working towards sustainability, too!” . Luckily, the term “sustainability” itself has enough connotations to come along with it that we can interpret what that means. The 2 most common, in my opinion are environmental sustainability and business sustainability (does this model allow us to stay in business?).

Another really important part of sustainability is HUMAN sustainability. As business owners and entrepreneurs, we’re super susceptible to overworking and burning out. Most people are generally harder on themselves than on others, so just think how that translates when you are your own boss? High stress, poor sleep and eating habits, and something that I’m most notorious for…forgetting to take time for yourself. In the theme of sustainability, we need to remember to spend some time on ourselves.

Lucky for us work-a-holics, there’s some wonderful wellness structures we can work with. P’unk Ave has been doing Yoga on Friday mornings for a few months now and the entire team has expressed how much they enjoy it. IndyHall member Jennifer Lim has offered to come on Friday Mornings and provide Reiki Energy Therapy. In full disclosure, Bart and I were provided a complimentary session to see what Reiki was all about. For those of you who saw us in the week prior to our opening, you saw two grown men on the edge…minimal sleep, high stress, and tons to do by September 1st. Jen came and gave us each a 30 minute session, and I can confidently say that the structure of the Reiki session put me back on the level to make it though the rest of the week.

From Jen’s literature:

Reiki is a very gentile practice of using light touch to deeply relax your body, allowing it to heal and rebalance itself naturally. Benefits include: stress reduction, pain management, increased focus, and general wellness.

Starting this Friday, Jen will be running 15, 30, and 60 minute sessions at $20, $40, and $75 respectively. Jen is providing 5% discounts for 30 and 60 minute sessions for IndyHall members, too! Sessions are by appointment: we have limited availability so let us know if you are interested!

I highly recommend a 15 minute “reboot” at the very least. You may find yourself glowing for the rest of the weekend! We hope to move forward with this, if there is interest, in an entire regiment of “Zen Hall” wellness programs. If you have any ideas or suggestions, let us know!

Tags: wellness, reiki, p’unk ave, yoga, collaboration, openness, community, sustainability, indyhall, coworking, independent work, stress

I knew that Amy was interviewed some time back when she was in NY working from Jelly with Amit, she mentioned that she had given IndyHall a shout out. There was a pretty well done piece on NPR today about Jelly as a solution to independent worker/work from home issues. Give it a listen, if you haven’t gotten some of the background on the event before (or even if you have).

Of course, I’m excited that Philadelphia was mentioned, as well as D.C.

Congrats to the crew on the coverage!

Tags: amy hoy, slash7, hyphenated people, amit gupta, NPR, jelly, coworking, NYC, Philadelphia, washington DC

I spent the last 2 days over at Drexel…and not taking classes again (sorry mom!). Instead, I was attending Podcamp Philly, which ended up being a really excellent event with some VERY well traveled attendees (yo canadians!) and a lot of great friends, old and new. I did my usual un/conference format of bouncing from session to session, hitting everything from Rand’s “Audio Basics” to Chris Penn and Drew Olanoff’s various Social Networking sessions to the LIVE taping of The Best Damn Tech Show, Period. And of course, good times had with Colin and Jason from Viddler because everybody knows that we love those guys.

As usual, the best time was spent in the halls meeting all kinds of cool local people who were so surprised by the size and skill level of the local scene. Once again, this goes to show what we’ve been saying at IndyHall all along: Philly is TEEMING with independent talent, whether it be pro or hobby, and the lack of channels and communication keep them from getting together, rising up, and totally rocking the entire WORLD with their product.

Big kudos to Whitney Hoffman and the whole PodCampPhilly team for making this happen. I was involved at the very edge of the planning of this conference, chiefly due to my commitment to getting IndyHall open for September 1st. Clearly, they didn’t need me around because they did an INCREDIBLE job with coordinating some pretty awesome programming and a venue for, once again, bringing the social media scene in Philadelphia together.

P.S. Thanks to everyone who stopped by IndyHall between the Saturday Wrap Up and the PodCamp Birthday. It was great to see a bunch of new faces stop by and crash the Hall for an hour or so, catch up on emails or relax on the couch. We hope to see you again!

We’ll be in and out of the office today (Saturday) to see what’s going on at at Podcamp Philly. So if you’re looking to come down and check us out or grab a desk for the day, be sure to CALL AHEAD! Don’t be afraid to, we’re happy to come back to open up for you.

Better yet, come to one of the social events tonight or my session tomorrow morning.

Hey lookie! We’re adding new books to the library all the time. Here’s the latest representation of what we’ve got courtesy of Shelfari. Add us as a friend on Shelfari and be sure to check out our wishlist on Amazon.

Based on his desktop wallpaper from a couple of months ago, and inspired by the recent price drop/model shift of the iPhone, it made sense that iPhone users at IndyHall should have an option to sport their IndyHall pride as a backdrop on their new gadgets.

Click the image to download it. The easiest way to set it as your background is to create a new album in iPhoto, add this image to it, and then set that album to sync to the phone in the iTunes configuration. Then, once it’s on the phone, choose it from the Wallpapers menu in the options section. Enjoy!

Tags: philadelphia, coworkingindyhall, independents hall, iPhone, wallpaper, John Bilotta Jr, jbiljr

Recent posts