from the business side
IndyHall is PROUD of two of the products to come out of organic team collaboration in the last several weeks.
This 4th of July weekend, we celebrate iSepta: created by Randy Schmidt, Chris Conley, and Jason Tremblay, as well as Ripit: created by Jason Allum, Johnny Bilotta, Dave Martorana, and Dave Speers.
In the spirit of celebrating our successes, IndyHall is inviting everyone to join us for frosty cold beverages at our favorite watering hole, National Mechanics. And we can’t remember a bad time at National Mechanics!
We’re gathering at 7pm on Thursday, July 3rd (right before your holiday weekend begins!) so there’s no excuse for missing it, unless you’re going out of town. And if you’re going out of town, you might want to reconsider!
RSVP is requested so we can get a head count. Your choice, Upcoming or Facebook.
We hope this is the first of many celebrations of team success!
The only thing better than a night at National Mechanics is a FREE night at National Mechanics!
We’re hoping to make these launch parties a regular event, and so with this first one we want to open up the opportunity for you to sponsor the event.
We’re designating 3 levels of sponsorship to make this event happen:
- Fan : $25 sponsorship
- Super-fan : $100 sponsorship
- Sugar-daddy : $500 sponsorship
We REALLY want to support more innovation like this, and we’d love for you to show your love for these teams hard work. All sponsorship dollars will go directly towards an open tab and passed appetizers.
As a sponsor your name and link will be added to a thank-you page on our site, as well as announced during the party.
All payments can be made with paypal, or you can drop off a check at IndyHall any time before the party. We thank you in advance for your support and generosity!
Thanks to our sponsors!
Anonymous Contributions
$25
$25 Fan Contributions
Kara LaFleur
Stan Schwartz
Lisa Schwartz
Haveboard
MediaComponents
Alex Sutherland
Roz Duffy
Duran Goodyear
Tony Green
Kevin Lee
Bill Bratun
J Marziani
Ross Lieberman
Marisa McClellan
$100 Super-fan Contributions
Night Kitchen Interactive
Sealworks, Inc.
Reed Gustow
WebThere
Round3Media
PhillyPreneurs ($50)/BridgeMarketingGroup($50)
Seer Interactive
30Points
P’unk Ave
Annie Heckenberger
Scott McNulty
$500 Sugar Daddy Contributions
ümlatte
uwishunu
Weblinc
Tags: iSepta,RipIt.app
Ever since starting IndyHall, it’s been a less than silent dream of ours to grow. Not just IndyHall, not just Philadelphia, but really to take over the world with coworking. It wasn’t until recently, during the massive presence of coworking at SXSW, that we caught the attention of the perfect supporter to really take our coworking empire to the next level.
For the last 3 weeks, since our return from Austin, I’ve been in private negotiations with the global desk share provider Regus. Their widespread reach (400 cities, 70 countries, and thousands of gorgeous facilities) is perfect for our needs to grow. Moreover, we completely align with their understanding of community and their history of creating hip, desirable workspaces that encourage collaboration and creativity by giving each member their own private desk module or office. Why yell across an open loft workspace when you can stay in your office, with your door closed, and call people on your desk phone?
We’re pleased to announce that we’ve sold IndyHall (location and it’s community) for a sum which we cannot disclose at this time.
The acquisition of IndyHall itself is only step 1 of the plan. Since the coworking movement itself is widespread, global, and diverse, we’ve gone ahead and begun negotiations of using the coworking cell-network for a widespread takeover of the global workforce. With the support of the coworking google group, we’re able to leverage all of our recent press to convince the remaining majority of the global workers to leave their full time jobs for positions as independent contractors and freelancers. With everyone working as independents, every desk of every coworking and Regus facility will be utilized 100%, maximizing all of our missions for optimum freelancer opportunities.
We look forward to the future growth of the movement with the support of this new partner. Congratulations Coworking, you’ve finally come into your own!
Happy April Fools to our new visitors, thanks for playing along!!
At the end of February, IndyHall will have been open at it’s location on 32 Strawberry street for 6 months.
6 months. Wow.
We can look at that one of two ways. In one respect, it feels like only yesterday. 6 months has totally zipped by.
A little history
In another respect, the amount that this entire group has accomplished in 6 months is astonishing. Looking at growth alone, it’s mind blowing. We signed an initial 15 member agreements only days before signing the lease for our office. Those members (2 Full Time, 3 Lite, and 10 Basic). As of today, we have 44 active memberships (8 Full Time, 5 Lite, and a whopping 27 Basic Members!).
Thats 3x growth of membership in 6 months, and we’re thrilled and proud that so many people have benefited from use of IndyHall as a coworking space and as a resource for learning and exchange.
How our Basic Membership Helps
When we decided to offer the $25/month basic membership last summer, it served two purposes. One, offering it for 6 months prepaid helped us build a pot of money that helped defer our startup costs. For the bootstrap-style operation we’ve run, we think that this was a huge portion of the reason we were able to make ends meet and stabilize as quickly as we have. Second, it gave the folks in our very active community an opportunity to contribute, for a nominal fee, to make sure that we’d be able to continue what we were doing: offering highly productive environments for people to collaborate on many, many different levels. Even if they weren’t using a desk, their contribution helped the other, very important side of what goes on at IndyHall in hosting and running of events.
What’s the problem?
We’re fast approaching the end of many people’s first 6 months of prepaid basic membership. While we’ve grown to a point where our more regular members help us stabilize the operating costs, the increased interest in the educational and social events that we’ve been ramping back up this month. In order for us to keep moving in that direction, we really need and appreciate your support in renewing your basic memberships.
The Deal
To thank everyone for their support, we’re going to be offering a 6 month basic membership renewal like the first time. If you renew your membership in February, we’re tossing in the free bonus day (7 free days over 6 months, use your floater day any time you like) AND a free IndyHall t-shirt. All Lite and Full members will receive a free shirt as well. The only way for Basic members to get a shirt for free is to pre-pay for another 6 months. This time, it will be $150 since no security deposit is necessary on the renewed membership.
We’ll be selling the IndyHall shirts for $20 each for non-members.
If you’re interested in renewing, please send an email letting us know. We will be accepting Checks and Google Checkout as before. If you’re already a member, you know how to get a hold of us. And of course, nothing says renewal like stopping by IndyHall for an in-person visit!
Thank You
Thanks in advance for all of your support, and here’s to many more successful 6 month anniversaries!
Over at CenterNetworks, my friend Allen Stern has made a post about his take on next steps for sponsored coworking, after seeing our recent support from Belkin.
I’m not against the idea, but I do agree with Chris that at this stage of the game, its not the place for direction of our energy. It’s hard to keep individuals focused when there are big business intentions steering them. Instead, I’d like to cite a couple of variants of coworking with corporate involvement that we have already experienced that involved individuals on an individual basis, representing a larger company that they work for:
A month and change ago, at our last National Mechanics Cream Cheese Session a couple of developers from Comcast Interactive Media came down to work for the day. Not only did they seem to have a really great, productive day but we (the usual suspects of the indyhall events) got to kick it with some incredibly talented people that are really stepping up the game for a company that has a pretty bad wrap in the Philadelphia creative community (and from my own personal experiences before going out on my own, it’s pretty clear that they know it). I think that this kind of game-changing activity, and the fact that Comcast let these developers work remote is awesome, and the fact that they worked from our event (prior to the opening of our office) instead of home or a cafe, was awesome. I look forward to being involved with them (and possibly more of the CIM team) in the future. This could be a great opportunity to break down some really longstanding barriers between the media behemoth that is Comcast, and the independent creative community.
This past Friday, 2 of my friends who work for another very large, local company spent the day at IndyHall’s new office. Adam Saslow, a software architect and Michael Bryman, a systems test engineer spent the day working remote for their employer, Motorola, based less than an hour outside of Center City Philadelphia. Again, this was a great opportunity for them to break the monotony of “corporate office life”, get some new scenery, new interaction, and possibly (hopefully) some inspiration that they can bring back to their office.
Adam and Michael started their day by joining a conference call in our conference room, and then continued their days working on the usual tasks that they would except they occasionally had a chance to break off into some social, but productive conversation.
One of our members, Jon Bettcher, interacted with them pretty heavily. Jon works for Reel FX based in Dallas, TX but works remote from home. He’s been working at IndyHall a few days a week since we installed desks and this to say:
Last Friday was a perfect example of why I’m so excited about Indyhall. I learned several new things just from the conversations back and forth, like the open platform initiative by the Motorola guys. I was even able to broadcast a few Ruby specific questions to the group, and received answers back quicker than I could have found them myself searching on Google. All of the conversations go a long way to making me feel more comfortable with the new development I’m doing for my company back in Dallas. Just the “buzz” surrounding Rails and the web development scene has greatly bolstered my confidence.
At the same time, on the other side of the city, there’s an office at UPenn’s Wharton School of Business that is under construction, with noise that is rendering the office an unproductive environment. Some workers are being allowed to work remote for a while, and rumor has it that some of them will be transplanting to IndyHall during the week leading up to our opening reception, representing another use case of the remote worker taking advantage of an environment like IndyHall.
These are just a couple of examples of how I’d like to see big(ger) businesses involved in coworking. Just like our organization has been built from the bottom up, putting the focus on the people first, I’d like to see the approach to corporate coworking done the same way: focusing on the people, first. Additional mutual benefits can be worked out along the way, once the basic human relationships have been established.
Mind you, that is not to say that we aren’t endlessly appreciative of every single individual and business who has chipped on on any level to support the opening of our space. I know I sound like a broken record but what else is new, the support has been overwhelming and we can’t thank you enough. Every penny, sofa, end table, mini fridge, and power strip, and printer is appreciated and helps us keep our user costs low, ultimately furthering the ability for people to get the best use out of our resources.
