Thanks to Flying Kite media for this video and article covering the event.

Special thanks to Ship It Society organizers and participants, we’re looking forward to the next event!

Ever feel like you want a garden, but don’t have room in this city?

Fear not! This hands on workshop will teach you the art of container gardening.  We will be planting a garden for Indy Hall’s balcony while learning skills to take into our own homes.You’ll walk away with a worksheet to help get you growing and some other fun goodies we’re cooking-up.

Farmer Patrick from Emerald Street Urban Farms will be at Indy Hall to teach us which plants to plant when, the kinds of containers you can use, preparing the right environment for your garden, and worm box composting.

We will also be whipping up some Sunday brunch fingerfoods for everyone to enjoy, YUM!  Children are welcome if they’d like to participate in the workshop.

All the proceeds will be going towards materials for the Indy Hall garden and a donation to the Emerald Street Urban Farm and Little Berlin art garden.

RSVP and purchase in advance here:

http://coseed.eventbrite.com/

Time and Place:

10am – 12:30pm at Indy Hall

20 N 3rd Street Philadelphia PA 19147

Fees for the workshop:

$10- Indy Hall members

$15- Non Members

-this includes materials to build Indy Hall a garden, brunch and a donation to the Emerald Street Urban Farm and Little Berlin art garden.

$35- Fair Grounds Supporter

If you have any questions contact Dana! dana@punkave.com

I wanted to share some news about a tea & wellness event that will be taking place at IndyHall on Sept 12th. For those of you that don’t know me, I am passionate about tea (you might have seen me steeping tea at Indy or convincing Parker to try a new blend that I created).

As we begin to embrace fall, I find myself falling deeper and deeper in love with tea as  the crisp air has me craving pots of warming teas. So, I wanted to share this love and passion by inviting you to Steeped in Beauty, a tea and wellness event that I am leading at IndyHall with my friend and colleague, Jolene Hart (natural beauty expert). On September 12th, you are welcome to indulge in an afternoon of tea and natural skin care through interactive cooking demos and workshop sessions that highlight the impact of tea and natural beauty on health and wellness. Learn how to cook with tea (white chai smoothie, earl grey cookies, lavender simple syrup) and how to make your own tea inspired beauty treatments.

Beyond the tea and healthy treats prepared during the interactive cooking demos, guests will sample treats provided by Sweet Freedom, Philadelphia’s first and only completely gluten-free, vegan, allergen-friendly bakery. The lovely flower shop, Poppy, will be sharing a few of their delicate arrangements with us (one will even be nestled in a tea pot! hooray!).

Gift bags with our recipes, natural beauty samples, Rishi’s white detox tea/green oolong tea and other goodies are included. All guests will be entered to win one of several raffle prizes, including a personal health and beauty coaching session with Jolene, a tea party consultation with me, a haiku teacup from teaspoons & petals, a pint of Nectarine-Lime jam from Marisa McClellan from Food In Jars, gift certificates to Tbar, a tea & tea documentary film package from The Meaning Of Tea, and a wellness vacation consultation session with professional travel planner, Maya Northen.

I hope you will join me in learning a bit more about how and why its so very special to have tea in our lives. Looking forward to seeing some friendly faces as we sip, cook and talk tea.

Many thanks to Alex and Parker for graciously allowing me to host the event at IndyHall. For those who can’t make it, we’ll try to save a few goodies for members to taste on monday. Although if our guests are extra hungry and thirsty, I’ll stop by the following week with some new tea to share (who knows, maybe I’ll be inspired to make an IndyHall tea blend?).

Steeped in Beauty: An Afternoon of Tea & Natural Skin Care

When: Sunday, September 12th, 1pm-3pm

Where: Independents Hall
20 North 3rd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106

Admission:
Tickets are available online for $21 and $25 the day of the event at the door (gift bag not guaranteed if purchased at door).

Indy Hall has now been open for business for 3 years.

Congratulations to all of us for spending the last 3 years (or some subset thereof) making Philadelphia a better place to make a living doing what we love.

I have a lot to say and a lot on my mind and in my heart, but I’m going to keep it brief for a change and let each of you say your piece instead.

Feel free to use this post and it’s comments to share sentiments, experiences, visions, excitement, joy, friendship, memories, and whatever comes to mind when you realize that before 3 years ago today, Indy Hall was an idea shared by a community, and now it’s one of the greatest things Philadelphia has to offer.

WHERE IS THE PARTY!?!?

For the last 2 years, as well as the re-opening in May of 2007, we’ve thrown an epic party to commemorate our history of accomplishments.

This year, we’re keeping it low key. I invite everyone to head over to – where else – National Mechanics tonight after 6:30pm.

Why no epic shindig with lots of hype?

I think we’re a group noted for action. I want a NEW action to celebrate, rather than a memory of one.

Sooooo let’s plan a MASSIVE multi-product/business/group/whatever launch party to celebrate some of our NEWEST accomplishments a little later this fall. You’ll be hearing more about ways to get involved with that in the coming weeks.

That said – National Mechanics – 6:30pm – you know the drill.

It’s been many months since our last Town Hall meeting, nine of them in fact. That’s a problem!

For the newly initiated (or anyone who has started hanging around Indy Hall in the last year), Town Hall meetings are Indy Hall’s best way of updating community members on large issues that we expect will prompt discussion. As great as our online forums can be, offline events like this have been extremely valuable for important events in our history, including our decisions to grow into this new office last year that we’ve all come to call home.

As we CONTINUE to grow (which is still remarkable to all of us), it’s long overdue we initiate another one of these discussions. In it, we’ll be providing some transparency into Indy Hall’s growth (including membership statistics), as well as some of the new and interesting ideas we have to address some of the pains associated with growing.

We’ll be holding our next Town Hall meeting this upcoming Monday, July 12th, from 5:30 to 7pm right here at Indy Hall.

After a round of introductions from everyone in attendance, the presentation portion of the Town Hall will be led by Geoff and I, and last ~30 minutes at the most. After the discussion, we turn to members from each membership level for some feedback. And then the floor is open more generally for discussion.

Its important to note that these events are NOT for members only: the general public is welcome. In the past we’ve had city council members as well as members of the press present. We think this level of transparency lets us operate the way we know best.

Also, this serves as yet another opportunity to get to know your coworkers, and hopefully get to know Geoff and I a little better as well.

Since this event is open to the public, we’re going to ask people to RSVP so we can plan for seating and space usage: http://anyvite.com/a9urvwzxga

In the end, our goal is that you have some insight into how things are continually evolving at Indy Hall, and what that means for you. There are always opportunities to get involved in new ways, suggest and implement your own ideas with our support, and make this place even better. We wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want to be, and that means a lot to us.

Its up to you to attend and include your voice. We can’t wait to see everyone’s faces on the 12th!

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.

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.

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.

We held one of these back in March when we were first thinking about moving from our Strawberry St. office into something bigger. It proved to be an extremely valuable format for getting the community up to speed, introducing people, and seeing progress forward.

On Tuesday, October 27th, we’re doing it again. The first of what we hope to continue as quarterly Town Hall meetings will allow the entire community, not just the paying membership, to come together to find out about IndyHall’s progress & growth, and continue to be a part of the shared vision.

We’ll be hosting it at our office, 20 North 3rd St. It will begin at 5:30 sharp and we expect it to take 60-90 minutes.

The goals of the Town Hall format are twofold: first, to open up as much information as we can about the business and community operations. Second, to provide a proper sounding board for the fast growing community that inhabits our clubhouse.

Imagine a hybrid of a “state of the union” from some community leaders, as well as an opportunity for your voice to have an impact. Of course, with the same level of approachability and authenticity you’ve come to expect from IndyHall.

We have some exciting announcements. But don’t we always?

Attendance isn’t mandatory for members, but its’ strongly recommended. Also, as I mentioned, this is a COMMUNITY town hall, which means it is open to the public. Because of this, we’re asking people to RSVP to make sure we can plan/arrange the space appropriately.

In the past, we’ve had good response and a significant turnout, and we’re hoping for the same this time.

Please help spread the word to other community members and organizations that might want to attend, and encourage them to RSVP.

We look forward to seeing everyone on the 27th.

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!