May 18 – Creative Directors Meetup @ Indy Hall
Filed under: Announcements, Community Support, Education/Workshops, Events, Independents Hall
Some months back, I was giving a tour of Indy Hall to Joe Rinaldi, an agent for Aquent focused on interactive design, development, and interactive project management. He’d been expressing interest in Indy Hall as a resource for some of the talent that he works with, but also loved what we were up to in terms of being a regional catalyst for encouraging creatives to interact with one another.
He’d remarked how much he’d like to come work from Indy Hall, and shared that a number of other people he works with who have offices to go to feel like they don’t have a reason to check out Indy Hall…and we agreed that it’d be valuable to find a way to give those people the opportunity they’d been looking for.
Joe’s been rallying a roster of Philadelphia’s finest Creative and Art Directors from agencies including Happy Cog, TMX, Tierney, Stick & Move, Vanguard, Comcast, Digitas, One Trick Pony, Red Tettemer, WellFed and more, for an evening of unique conversation about the challenges facing creative leaders.
Through this dialogue, he’s hoping to foster collaboration and continue to catalyze the creative community in Philadelphia to share the amazing work they are creating.
Seeing how nicely this fit with our mission, it was clear that we would want to host this event and give those creative directors a reason to visit!
The next meeting of this group will be at Indy Hall tomorrow, Tuesday May 18th at 6:30pm. Creative Directors of all levels of experience are encouraged to join for hearty discussion, pizza, and of course some drinks.
If you’re interested in attending, we ask that you drop Joe an e-mail to let him know the headcount for the refreshments. Otherwise, we’ll see you at Indy Hall! Holy moly that was fast! We actually filled up! If you’d like to be included in information about future events, you can drop us a line and we’ll pass word along to Joe.
Guest Post by Dave Troy of Beehive Baltimore Coworking
Filed under: Community Support, coworking, Education/Workshops, Events
On January 22nd, a delegation from Beehive Baltimore visited IndyHall — a trip we called “A Tale of Two Cities.” Baltimore and Philadelphia share many common characteristics: an amazing, eclectic workforce and arts community, a prominent position in the east coast corridor, and also many of the problems that plague many of our urban areas.
The idea for the trip came after I visited with Alex back in October and I wished I could “bottle” the energy and ideas behind IndyHall to share with my peers in Baltimore. Of course, I had already done this in one way; in 2008 my chance meeting of Alex Hillman at a wedding of a mutual friend is what led directly to the creation of Beehive Baltimore, our coworking community in Baltimore.
But I wanted to do more: to connect the members of our coworking community directly with like-minds in Philadelphia, to inoculate them with the knowledge that our two communities are linked by common values and also to raise the idea that coworking is a very powerful seed for urban renewal and economic growth. The founders of Beehive share something very important in common with Geoff and Alex: we want to change our cities for the better, and not just a little bit.
At first the trip was going to be a small carpool affair with 8-10 people. Pretty soon it turned into a bus trip with over 30 people registered. When we showed up on the doorstep at IndyHall, Alex and Geoff were a little surprised at the size of the crowd. But here’s the thing: show people a better way, a path forward that has room for hope in it, and people will rush to understand and be a part of it.
Our delegation was eager to learn what made the IndyHall community tick, and to compare notes from experiences in Baltimore. Some were our regular members, others were members of our community that want to drive change here. While we arguably gained a lot from a generous Q&A with Geoff and Alex, the real fun came in the Show & Tell and the extended lunch at National Mechanics. Many good new connections were made between the Baltimore and Philadelphia communities.
But, perhaps most importantly, the trip did one thing: show that we’re here for one another. Philadelphia and Baltimore both face staggering challenges in the years ahead. I, for one, am comforted by the knowledge that there are likeminded souls in a nearby city who will be working to understand these challenges alongside us, and I hope you feel the same way. We invite you to make a similar trip here to Baltimore sometime soon. Thanks for sharing with us. We all truly appreciate it and will be looking for ways to keep our communities growing together.
New Event Series! Meet the…
Filed under: Announcements, Education/Workshops, Events, Independents Hall
We’re kicking off December with a new monthly event series, “Meet the…”. A mashup demo and meetup event meant to get community members a chance to meet cool people working on cool things. Our show-and-tell events continue to be one of our most popular recurring events, and this is only a slight derivation from that.
Our first event happens to be tech, and the person you’ll meet happens to be a developer, but one of the things we pride ourselves on is the diversity at IndyHall. We’re looking for people to host “Meet the…” in the future from other disciplines. Business, music, education, architecture, authors… anything goes at IndyHall.
The first event, on December 1st at 6pm, will be presented by the VP of Engineering at Apstrata, a very exciting “cloud” technology. From the team,
Apstrata will present their Cloud-based Data Hub for the Realtime Web. The Apstrata Data Hub is a an easy and cost effective way to store application data in the Cloud. Easy because it offers a document-style database through a set of APIs that can be used from any Web or Mobile client. Cost effective because it eliminates the need for a custom application server. Apstrata has a unique set of rich features like integrated user management, field level security on document data and server side scripting that makes the Data Hub a perfect compliment to rich client environments like Javascript, Flash/Flex, iPhone and Android.
Ryan Murray, VP of Engineering at Apstrata, will give an overview of the Data Hub and dive into some code examples of how this can be used in practice. If you are a Web or Mobile developer you will find this session interesting, and a new approach to building applications.
An interesting sidenote is that Apstrata’s parent company, element^n Inc, is the company that our friends from New Work City actually shared space with for the last year at 200 Varick in Manhattan.
Please welcome them by coming to hang out, enjoy some food and beer at IndyHall on December 1st from 6pm-7pm. We’re asking for RSVP’s so we can plan food and beer.
Show and Tell Next Thursday!
Filed under: Announcements, Community Support, Education/Workshops, Events, Independents Hall
Every month we gather for an adult version of “Show and Tell”! No, not the kind where we take off our clothes…the kind where we show off what we’ve been working on, what we’ve learned, and anything we might have to share with the group!
In the past people have demoed projects, shared new tools they’d discovered that make their lives easier, or told stories about events they’d attended recently.
Like a number of our other lunchtime events, these are open to the public and tend to be well attended.
We’ve still got a few presentation spots open, so if you’re interested in joining as a presenter or an audience member, please let Dana know!
IgnitePhilly is TONIGHT!
Filed under: Announcements, Education/Workshops, Events
I know that not everybody is tuned in to the same channels for news and events, and while it’s been on the IndyHall Calendar, IgnitePhilly doesn’t have much description or meaning to lots of the newer folks.
Tonight is the 4th IgnitePhilly, an event co-organized by a number of awesome community members (including our own Geoff DiMasi).
What is Ignite? It’s a fast paced presentation format. In Philly, it’s REALLY fast. Rock show fast. Ignite takes over Johnny Brenda’s at Front and Gerard and have presenters from all corners of Philadelphia’s most exciting projects and gives them 5 minutes to share something special…without self-promoting.
5 minutes and 20 slides later, your mind has been blown. Go grab yourself another beer. There’s another presentation coming up.
I’m a huge fan of the quote from Brian James Kirk:
“Perhaps the most interesting thing about the evening was that these important players in Philly’s advancing creative communities didn’t get on stage to show off their resume and reel. They used the forum to talk about what others are doing to make a difference…The fundamental takeaway from IgnitePhilly is that that the ability to change the world is more real than ever.”
If you’ve never attended an Ignite, I highly encourage you to make it tonight. Presentations start at 8 but doors are at 7, and you REALLY need to get there early. We’ve sold out a 300+ person room every single time this has happened.
If you want to lock down your spot, there are still some $5 pre-sale tickets available.
All proceeds are going to the Philadelphia Food Trust, so Ignite doesn’t make a dime. Ignite has already raised over $500 in ticket pre-sales so far.
I hope to see lots of new faces tonight, the presenters list is full of some of the smartest people I’ve met, and plenty I can’t wait to meet.
Calling All Java Developers! November 1st, CodeRetreat @ IndyHall!
Filed under: Announcements, Community Support, Education/Workshops, Events, Independents Hall
At code retreat, we retreat from the world to advance in our craft. We sharpen our saws, together.
We retreat from production and business value to increase our production capacity, our quality, our velocity, our ability to produce business value.
We retreat from immersion in deep technology issues to advance in our ability to learn and adopt to any technology well.
We retreat from our fears, and embrace new practices and patterns.
We retreat from our local ponds and swim in a larger pool. We connect with other passionate coders who we seldom get to code with. We make new connections and learn new lessons.
At code retreat everything is about the journey and nothing about the destination.
Sebastian Hermida is organizing, and we are hosting, what sounds like a very exciting, interesting, and valuable event for the Philadelphia Java developer community. The iterative build/breakdown/discuss model of a “Code Retreat is explained rather well on his post about the event.
If you’re a Java developer in or near Philadelphia, I highly encourage you to register to attend the Code Retreat at IndyHall on Sunday, November 1st. They are requesting RSVPs, so please head to their sign up page if you plan to attend.
We love supporting events like this that are designed to bring people together for the sake of improving their craft. If you and your user group have plans for a similar event, please talk to us about hosting your event!
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.
NEW Reduced prices for Scott Bellware’s TDD and Web Testing Workshops, June 2nd & 3rd
Filed under: Education/Workshops, Events, From the Business Side
About 2 weeks ago we announced a pair of developer courses for the Philly ASP.Net contingent to be hosted at IndyHall Classic. These classes, run by Alt.NET leader Scott Bellware, have recently been discounted to $200 each, or $300 if you sign up for both.
We’re happy to have Scott joining us from Austin, Texas where he periodically hangs out with our friends at Conjunctured. Please welcome Scott to Philadelphia and help spread the word about these classes!
Good Test, Better Code
On June 2nd Scott will be be teaching “Good Test, Better Code”, a workshop about test-driven and behavior-driven development and design in .NET taught in the context of Lean and agile development and developer productivity.
Web Application Testing with Selenium and RSpec for Developers, Testers, and Teams
On June 3nd Scott will be teaching “Web Application Testing with Selenium and RSpec for Developers, Testers, and Teams”. This workshop introduces developers and testers to using context specification style TDD for web applications. The basics of Lean software development are taught, showing how to use web application testing and specification to work to drive teamwork, development, and communication.
IndyHall Welcomes Scott Bellware’s TDD and Web Testing Workshops, June 2nd and 3rd
Filed under: Announcements, Education/Workshops, Events, From the Business Side, Independents Hall, IndyHall U
If you’ve set foot in IndyHall over the last 2 years, you have likely noticed an abundance of Apple computers. That’s not because we’re Mac exclusive, it’s just what most of the members had chosen. Some months back, our local Microsoft evangelist (and IndyHall member) Dani Diaz asked when IndyHall Labs would be doing any Windows ports of our apps. I told him “when windows developers started hanging out at IndyHall!”
I got a chance to do something proactive about the lack of MS Platform developers at IndyHall when another of our new basic members (and a long time colleague of mine) Brian Donahue tweeted about a potential Alt.Net class coming up that would be looking for space, being put on by prominent Alt.Net developer Scott Bellware.
I’m happy to announce that we’ll be hosting two of Scott’s popular classes during the first week of June: “Good Test, Better Code” and “Web Application Testing with Selenium and RSpec for Developers, Testers, and Teams”.
Both workshops are single-day, high-impact workshops geared to creating a maximum amount of learning with a minimum time away from work. They will be hosted at our 32 Strawberry Street location, “IndyHall Classic”.
Each workshop is $300. Folks attending both workshops receive a $50 discount on each!
Good Test, Better Code
On June 2nd Scott will be be teaching “Good Test, Better Code”, a workshop about test-driven and behavior-driven development and design in .NET taught in the context of Lean and agile development and developer productivity.
Web Application Testing with Selenium and RSpec for Developers, Testers, and Teams
On June 3nd Scott will be teaching “Web Application Testing with Selenium and RSpec for Developers, Testers, and Teams”. This workshop introduces developers and testers to using context specification style TDD for web applications. The basics of Lean software development are taught, showing how to use web application testing and specification to work to drive teamwork, development, and communication.
These workshops do have a limited capacity, so I encourage you to register soon! And thanks to Scott and Brian for a chance to get the IndyHall community and the Alt.Net communities working together!
SOLD OUT! Cocoa Programming Foundations
Filed under: coworking, Education/Workshops, Independents Hall, IndyHall U
A couple of weeks back we announced our first IndyHall U class, developed in conjunction with Cocoaheads Philly. As of last night, this class is SOLD OUT!
Congratulations to the team who put this class together, we’re really looking forward to hosting it at IndyHall’s Classic location at 32 Strawberry Street.
