Why do people love Indy Hall?
We asked. They told.
Filed under: coworkers, coworking, FAQs, Independents Hall, IndyHall U, Research
After nearly 4 years of working on making the best place in the world to work, we turned to our members to find out exactly what they thought about the experience. In their own words.
I can’t tell you how proud I am to be a part of this community.
Alternative link to PDF hosted on Google Docs
This draft includes the preliminary findings of our interviews. We will continue to synthesize our findings, add more interview sources, and in the near future publish our research framework to encourage other coworking spaces to conduct their own research as well.
Perhaps just as rewarding was hearing some responses from non-interviewed members. Things like:
It’s awesome to take a step back from the day-to-day mindset and take a moment to appreciate the big picture we are actually part of.
Not everyone is jammin’ some nice tunes whilst they work away on something they actually care about, let alone surrounded by people they like.
We get to do that.
This is a rare
and beautiful thing.
I would totally fit into this profile [...] I haven’t seen anything close to this. And I have read a ton of market research stuff and HR stuff as well. I cannot praise this report enough…
I get goosebumps reading some of the quotes in there cause I think exactly the same way.
A very, very big thank you goes to all of our interviewees. And a special thank you to Valerie Wilcox, the Indy Hall member who suggested and led this entire project.
For members, by members, about members. That’s how we do it at Indy Hall.
From the Video Archives: Coworking Questions answered for Web Worker Daily in 2009
Filed under: coworking, FAQs, From the Business Side, Independents Hall, IndyHall 201, IndyHall U, Videos
Wow…a WHOLE YEAR AGO, I answered a bunch of questions for Web Worker Daily in video format. I completely forgot about them until Gerard Sychay from Cincy Coworks tweeted about them. They answer questions that we answer a lot, so I thought it’d be valuable to post here.
IndyHall History:
Bootstrapping:
Diversity
The Future of IndyHall (from last year)
Coworking Tips
How IndyHall got the best office manager, without hiring an office manager
Filed under: coworking, From the Business Side, Independents Hall, IndyHall 201, IndyHall U
Posted first to the Coworking Google Group, mostly copied here for sharing/recordkeeping.
The question was in response to something rather timely, as we’ve been discussing the issue quite a bit recently.
I wanted to talk about the issue of hiring a space manager from our experience in the last 2 years.
We took a fairly holistic coworking approach to bringing on someone to help me run IndyHall day to day, and here’s how and why.
Dana, our office manager, came on a year ago as an assistant to me, with the job of taking administrative tasks away from me as she saw fit, and finding ways to improve things around the office. That meant I paid her (and still do) a portion of her income out of my pocket, as she helps me…be effective at being me.
At the same time, rather than employ her, we brought her on as a contractor to help administrate IndyHall.
This was important for two reasons:
1) it helped us keep our overhead low
2) it gave us the opportunity to cultivate another successful independent as a part of the IndyHall community
Dana knew that IndyHall could only afford to pay her a certain amount per month. Having a desk to work from is an obvious perk, but a perk nonetheless.
Most importantly, the rest of the time, she needed to find other things to do to make ends meet. Most of you haven’t met her, but Dana is exactly who you’d want to be greeting you when walking into …well, anywhere. She’s smart, friendly, outgoing. She’s the perfect person to have at the other end of the phone lines, email, or on the other side of the desk.
She also had a wealth of skill-sets and mentor-ship at her fingertips in the IndyHall community, a resource that someone with a little gumption and focus can do some real damage with.
And she has.
Rather than be cornered into an admin job, Dana took advantage of the fact that her skills also make her an awesome candidate for doing support work alongside the other talent in the room. She took on the role of doing email support for one of the products born at IndyHall, RipIt. Since then, she’s grown that role to supporting 4 products (including RipIt, Beanstalk, Freckle Time Tracking, and another that I don’t even know anything about) which is now consuming the majority of her time and she’s looking at ways to grow and scale that business of providing affordable customer support to indie products.
What does that mean for IndyHall, now that she’s dedicating more time to her own ventures?
Well, for one, it means we succeeded in cultivating a successful independent (some would say that I’ve ruined her for any “real” job. i consider that a success as well). Not only that, but along the way Dana has single handedly contributed to a sizable chunk of our growth in the last year, by not just being a “desk admin” but someone who makes it part of her job to make sure people in the office are happy. Things like cupcake Thursdays. And that awesome mural many of you have seen in pictures of our old space, was painted by her. And comic relief, of course.
Furthermore, she helped me get my life back, because I was dedicating all of my personal time to running IndyHall AND my own consulting business. Now, I focus on vision and strategy and leadership for IndyHall, and less on the management of it.
But she’s growing this support business. So now what?
With her able to dedicate 20% or less of her time to the office, our admin needs an admin.
So the cycle repeats itself. We’re about to start looking for an intern to repeat the cycle we’ve gone through with Dana in the last year. We’re splitting Dana’s role into two, a general manager and an admin. The best part? Dana figured this out on her own. She split up the role like this:
Indy Hall Administrator - 8:30a – 5:00p Monday – Friday
Responsibilities would include:
- opening the space every morning
- being available at the front during the day to answer any questions
- give tours of the space
- in charge of reservations
- keep daily attendance records
- daily invoicing for drop ins
Indy Hall General Manager- 5-10 hours a week
- monthly invoices
- membership management
- planning events (show and tell, 2 hr. workshops, etc)
- contact form emails
- general management of things that need to be done / improvements to IH
- cupcakes on Thursdays 
The plan would be for the admin to report to her, and in time, have the admin become the GM as Dana continues to grow her support business.
And then the cycle continues.
Geoff and I are really excited about this process and how it has worked out, and think it’s great for the long term sustainability of the management of the space. It lets me focus on the stuff I need to focus on, and it creates a constant cycle of opportunity for new people to build their careers in creative management roles.
Of course, if your cashflow allows it, you can just pay someone outright. But we think this aligns more with the goals and values of coworking than just hiring an employee. We truly wanted that person to be a part of the community, rather than a service for the community. By going the route of empowerment rather than employment, we achieved a lot of goals together.
Oh, and if you ever meet Dana at IndyHall, SXSW, or anywhere else…be sure to say hi.
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.
IndyHall-U pilots “Mac Programming Foundations” class with Philly Cocoaheads
Filed under: Education/Workshops, Events, Independents Hall, IndyHall U
Education is core to IndyHall. Specifically, peer education. We’ve said (and not just Geoff and I, but our members) that it’s hard to not learn something while working at IndyHall. The diversity of skillsets and experiences, along with a group over people who truly love their craft, makes for some really unique learning experiences.
Take that, mix in Geoff’s University professor background and our shared flare for seeing education reformed into a more hands on format, and something starts to bubble.
For a while now (at least since the first IgnitePhilly), we’ve been musing around the idea of having a more formal workshop series than the evening workshops we’ve held over the last 2 years. Something where the model for organic peer education we already know works, but we have a chance to really focus on it and figure out a way to institutionalize it without killing it with bureaucracy.
With the move to the new office space on 3rd street, we’re left with “IndyHall Classic” (the new pet name for our Strawberry street location) for the next 10 months as an experimental classroom workspace. We’ve got lots of ideas, and will share more as things evolve. Things are likely to start design and tech heavy, but that’s only because that’s who’s volunteered to work on developing classes. IndyHall U is NOT meant to be a tech shop, much like IndyHall isn’t. Diversity is welcome. Deviation from the norm is encouraged. Seriously.
In the mean time, we’re excited to announce the very first beta class from within the Tech Department of IndyHall U: Mac Programming Foundations.
Bring an Apple for the Teacher
As a natural evolution of the monthly Cocoaheads meetup that convenes at IndyHall once a month, Mac Programming Foundations grew out of a desire to develop a higher baseline of knowledge for Cocoaheads attendees. Cocoaheads organizer Andy Mroczkowski banded together with Jason Allum, David Martorana, Aaron Evans, and Michael Zornek to put together the two-session class, and urged us to let them hold it almost immediately after we’ve migrated our office to our new location.
The class will consist of two sessions on Saturday May 9th and May 16th. $100 gets you not just the two sessions, but a copy of “Learn Objective C on the Mac“, a companion book for the class.
$100 is a steal even without the curriculum and the book: to get to learn from 5 extremely bright Cocoa Developers for 8 total hours is well worth the c-note.
You can visit the Mac Programming Foundations page for more information.
Space is limited, so if you are interested in the class please register as soon as possible!
