We announced our Halloween party with Tattooed Mom a couple of weeks ago, and since, have been musing about what makes OUR party different (besides the obvious, built in awesomeness).
We’ve partnered with Geekadelphia for a costume contest, and it’s a costume contest for the geeks by the geeks. As requested, we wanted this to be the party for you to wear the costumes that you were worried about wearing out - not because they were particularly embarrassing - but because you thought your non-geeky friends might not get it. Well, we appreciate your sense of humor and creativity, so we’re supporting that with the following costume categories:
Fan favorite (crowd voted)
Internet celebrity
Best hero
Best villain
Most obscure
And one “top secret” category…even if you’re not trying to win, this one might be your chance!
There’s a week and a half left until the party (including a weekend) so that’s plenty of time to finish up your costume, change your mind once or twice, or rush off to the costume store.
Lectures is BACK in action! This month’s lecture is being presented by Don Miller, also known as NO CARRIER. If you’ve been to IgnitePhilly 1 or 2, or to the IndyHall Birthday Bash, you’ve seen the Don’s work. Now’s your chance to learn more about it!
Don’s going to will focus a bit on his work, the history of the scene, and some more technical stuff for people that may have questions. It’ll be a presentation with video, music, and more!
From Don:
Their time in the spotlight may be over, but many have found uses for forgotten video game consoles and computer hardware. Although 8-bit games are a thing of the past, there is a vibrant art scene with retrocomputing at its core. The hardware of the Game Boy, Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Commodore 64 are repurposed and software reprogrammed to turn these aging machines into synthesizers, sequencers, visualizers, and much more.
Don Miller, or NO CARRIER, is an educator, programmer, and live visualist living in Philadelphia. Part of the 8bitpeoples artist collective, he writes new software for nearly obsolete videogame and computer hardware, for use at live music events and installations. He performs regularly in Philly and NYC, and has recently taken his visuals worldwide. Catch him again this year at the Blip Festival, December 4th-7th 2008, in NYC.
The lecture is taking place at IndyHall on October 29th from 6:30-8:30. RSVP on Upcoming!
Also catch Don this saturday at 8-static, an event being organized by our buddies at The Hacktory.
International “it’s OK to dress like a freak” day is coming soon: Halloween is in just a few weeks! Via twitter, I saw someoneBen Kessler mention that they’d like to have a geeky party to wear their obscure geek-culture referenced costume to and not be laughed at. Becky Clawson and I chatted about it outside of our usual haunt last week, and we brainstormed around trying out a new spot. That’s when we reached out to Robert Perry, co-owner of Tattooed Mom on South Street, with an idea.
Robert’s been pretty active in the philly geek scene, and is a bit of a self-proclaimed geek himself. He’s running one of our favorite small business twitter accounts, and has come to events including the August “Tweetup” and one of the P’unk Ave Junto’s in the past.
Last night, Robert and I solidified plans to invite the Philly creative/geek scene to Tattooed Moms on Thursday, October 30th (the night before Halloween). We plan on starting at 9pm and going as late as they’ll have us. Drinks are always cheap at Mom’s, and Thursday night is their $1.50 Pabst 16oz cans & $1 Lionshead bottles til midnight.
The only logical name for this event? “IndyHalloween ‘08!”
Over the next couple of weeks we’re going to reach out to some other folks in the community to come up with some fun games/contests for during the party. In the mean time: mark your calendars for Thursday, October 30th at 9pm, and get working on your geeky costumes now!
Please RSVP on Facebook so we have an idea of how many to expect!
We’re very happy to announce that IndyHall will be participating as a workshare space in RailsRumble 2008. This one-weekend competition is designed to bring together a team of developers to produce a product in 48 hours or less. Over 200 teams are competing from around the world, and we’re happy to host a few here!
According to their blog, Rails Rumble 2008 includes participants from USA, Germany, Finland, Canada, Morocco, Israel, Spain, Russia, United Kingdom, Australia, Denmark, Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, VN, Russian Federation, Croatia, Poland, Brazil, Italy, Austria, France, Sri Lanka, Venezuela, Serbia, Philippines, Belgium, Estonia, Canada, Thailand, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Portugal, México, Egypt and India. WOW.
Some of our community members already have a good deal of experience brainstorming, building, and launching a micro-app in a short period of time, so we’re excited to see what gets produced this time through.
The event is going to be taking place on October 18th and 19th, and I’m looking forward to it quite a bit.
We’ve already got one team, but have room for a couple more. If you’ve got a team registered for Rails Rumble 2008 and are in the Philadelphia area, please reach out and let us know if you’re looking for a location to participate!
