Say Hi to Parker and Michelle
Filed under: Announcements, Community Support, From the Business Side, Independents Hall
A few weeks back, we put out a call for an intern to help out at IndyHall. We wanted to frame it carefully to make it an opportunity not just to help with IndyHall operations, but to give someone the opportunity to grow and learn as a member of the community.
We lucked out, and got two of ‘em.
Honestly, the response we got to the post was overwhelming and positive. All of the candidates we interviewed were incredible, and we had a hard decision to make.
Last week, we were joined by Michelle Nugent, and this week, she met her new cointern (that’s right, I went there) Parker Whitney.
They’ve already done a great job working out their own schedule to make sure that our front desk is always attended, and are planning projects to improve quality of life around the office. They’re already becoming a force to be reckoned with, and I can’t wait to see what they accomplish. We’re lucky to have some extremely capable help…Dana may actually need to worry about being outdone! Ok, just kidding. Dana still rocks, too.
While they’re working here, they’re also both exploring their personal aspirations of creativity, business, communications, technology, and truly owning their place in Philadelphia.
Please say hi to Parker and Michelle when you come in the door, and don’t hesitate to grab them, take them to lunch, and learn more about them!
Philly Startup Leaders “Hack Weekend”: October 17th and 18th
Filed under: Announcements, Events
This is an event that we’ve been talking about doing for a while but I’m thrilled to see PSL get one off the ground!
PSL 2.0 Weekend is an open hack on the technologies and communications that hold us together as a community. In one weekend, we are going to:
1. Redesign our web presence
2. Rewrite our core documents
3. Develop new communication and collaboration tools to bring the regional tech community even closer togetherNo one knows exactly what will come out of it. All we know for sure is that with so much brainpower and know-how in one room, it’s going to be awesome.
We want to see you there. If you’re a hacker, designer or writer, this is a great opportunity to meet and collaborate with your peers — all stars in the Philly scene — on a vision you dream up together. It’s also going to be blast. By day we’ll be cranking away on our projects, and by night we’ll be watching improv comedy and parading around Philly in a geek entourage that’s sure to turn heads.
When:
Sat 10/17 from 10AM-6:00 PM (with improv comedy and party to follow)
Sun 10/18 from 10AM-6:00 PM
Where:
Baiada Center @ Drexel – 3225 Arch Street, PhiladelphiaBring:
Your creativity, your laptop and your favorite t-shirt
I’m looking forward to this event, and hope that people come out to spend the weekend banging on their projects and producing some AMAZING stuff, while making new friends and meeting your peers.
Kudos to the PSL crew of putting together an awesome-sounding event! I hope that we can take away some great lessons and do something similar for the IndyHall community in coming months.
IndyHall joins the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours for their 10th year
Filed under: Announcements, Community Support, Events, Independents Hall
Philadelphia Open Studio Tours allows visitors to “Follow Art to the Source” by organizing & promoting artists (and now Indies) to open their spaces, show, and sell their work in a unique setting – their own. POST, now celebrating it’s 10th year as the largest annual tour of artist studios in Philadelphia features hundreds of artists during the first two weekends in October:
- East of Broad October 3-4
- West of Broad October 10-11.
This year, Indy Hall is participating in POST, a grassroots city wide event, as a Community Partner defined as “a way to build coalitions between professional artists, local businesses, community institutions, and arts organizations”. During the first weekend of October Indy Hall will showcase it’s space for the Artistic Community of Philadelphia, while introducing the Indy Community to fellow creatives and their colleagues.
A few ideas instantly came to mind, such as using the Front Conference room as a portfolio / gallery space, and potentially having workshops or demos in different areas of the Hall, but this is your time to shine. Bring us your best ideas for utilizing the space. Think of it as a Show and Tell on a larger scale. This is an open call for participation. Show us what you’ve got.
This is also an opportunity for people that can’t otherwise come to Indy Hall during the week to see the new space we moved into in May It’s an opportunity for you to show your friends & family what you do and where you do it. It is also a great opportunity to form professional relationships & possible collaborations with artists, creatives, and the people who support them. All kinds of people go on the tours, and this is a great way to reach out beyond the artistic community as well.
So come hang out for the first weekend of POST. It’s pretty much a guaranteed good time, with an excellent group of people, and of course snacks and beer, but that goes without saying. As an added bonus – Indy Hall is offering a Free Day Pass for October 3-4, just reserve your spot using the online reservation form to guarantee your space for the weekend.
Two Years Later: The Progress is Bittersweet
Filed under: Announcements, Community Support, Education/Workshops, From the Business Side, Independents Hall
This past week, we celebrated our 2 year anniversary of IndyHall opening its first location, the office on the 2nd floor of 32 Strawberry Street. The event was incredible, as we had the opportunity to celebrate another milestone, the 100th episode of IndyHall born Two Guys on Beer. A few hundred of our closest friends came out to share in the festivities, with nearly 300 people RSVPd. Our friends at National Mechanics and Flying Dog made sure that for the first few hours, the Dogtoberfest was flowing freely.
A huge thank you to our supporters, our friends, and everyone who’s helped make the last 2 years possible.
The same date marked the 4 month anniversary of us moving into our NEW home, at 20 North 3rd Street. An upgrade in every sense, square footage, street access, balcony, full kitchen, bigger lounge, more than twice the desks and LOTS of room to move around…we’re extremely proud of the space that this community has been working every day to make its own.
Our membership has nearly doubled since our Town Hall in in March. We’ve had some great friends move on from Philadelphia, as well, which is always sad, but we are happy to have had them be a part of IndyHall while they were here.
With a mix of sadness and excitement, last week I announced to our members that we’d be retiring 32 Strawberry Street, recently known as “IndyHall Classic“. Our goal, as mentioned in that Technically Philly article, was to couple our expansion with an educational element. The vision was something of a community classroom, much like IndyHall has become the community workspace.
Unfortunately, our runway of cashflow to keep IndyHall Classic as a standalone event space wasn’t long enough to get the space self-sustaining with users, coupled with the usual summer lull. We decided to look outside of our own efforts for partners, and ne of the people I spoke to with was Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg, partner and business lead at Zivtech. Zivtech is an open source development shop that specializes in Drupal as a platform for both technology and open source education.
Zivtech had been one of our sponsors for the party IndyHall partnered with Mashable to throw back in the spring, the very one that celebrated the opening of our new office. A few of their employees had even become members of IndyHall since moving into the new office, sharing desks several times a month and joining us for events over the summer.
Alex was interested in utilizing IndyHall classic for some Drupal training and classes, but when I asked Alex if he’d be interested in moving Zivtech’s offices into IndyHall classic, the response was positive. We worked with them and our former landlords and came to an arrangement that worked for everyone.
We’re working with Zivtech to pass the torch (and some of the furniture) over the next couple of weeks, but as of this weekend we’ve closed a chapter in IndyHall’s history.
This fall, we’re going to be ramping up our classes and events once again, but on the smaller scale that we used to run them on. We’ve kept a ~600 square foot breakout room at the new space available for events, and over the next several weeks will be using it to host everything from our own workshops and daytime events, Blame-A-Thon, and a couple of user groups such as Cocoaheads. We’ll also be utilizing it during the BarCamp Philly pre-part BeerCamp.
The retirement of IndyHall Classic is hardly the retirement of events and classes at IndyHall, but instead the evolution and progress of our ever-growing community.
Congratulations to Zivtech on your new home, to Two Guys on Beer for 100 episodes, and to all of you, for continuing to show Philadelphia, and the world, what we’re made of.
