Event Highlights: July 19 – July 24, 2010

Summer is in full swing, Philadelphia. In the whirlwind of carnivals, neighborhood barbecues and family vacations, don’t forget about this week’s events calendar. It’s chock-full of events you won’t want to miss and deciding which one to attend is tricky, so let us help.

We have your busy summer schedule in mind, dear reader, and we’ve chosen this week’s top three events to ensure you’re always in the loop. Kick your week off right with a summer bash hosted by Philly Startup Leaders. Then, chat about social networking and get all your health insurance questions answered.

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Independents Hall gets back to work, experiences growing pains

Independents Hall co-founders Geoff DiMasi (left) and Alex Hillman speak at the coworking space's Town Hall.

Independents Hall co-founders Geoff DiMasi and Alex Hillman just came right out and said it.

“We suck at putting these things on often enough,” said Hillman to a crowd of roughly 30 members of the coworking space that were crammed into the building’s northern wing.

Hillman and DiMasi where speaking at Indy Hall’s third town hall, an informal gathering where the coworking space updates its members and interested public on news pertaining to the space while providing an update of the plans of the Indy Hall leadership.

Yesterday evening, Hillman and DiMasi shared some new policies to help Indy Hall deal with its ballooning membership, new security protocols to address recent thefts and a pledge to return Indy Hall to a hub of social and professional events.

“I feel we haven’t done a great job in returning to the cultural aspects that made Indy Hall awesome,” said Hillman.

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Friday Q&A: Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital

Josh Kopelman is angry.

When Technically Philly pops into his office, the normally cheery venture capitalist is busy trying to figure out why First Round Capital’s email service is down.

“They say six minutes of downtime,” he says. “but they’re way over that.”

After a brief phone conversation (he would later blog about the downtime) he immediately returns to his normal upbeat demeanor and for good reason: Kopelman is one of four founding partners of one of the most active early-stage investment companies in the country. The firm has become as much of a brand as the companies it invests in, boasting the most-visited VC site on the web.

Located in a small, nondescript office building in West Conshohocken, the firm has expanded to San Francisco and will open its New York City offices next week, giving it a headquarters in two of the largest technology communities. The firm is setting a new standard in investment by making a high number of smaller, early stage investments while nurturing companies from the ground up.

First Round, however, is just the latest chapter in the Wharton grad’s career. Kopelman, a New York native, started Internet information company Infonautics while still in college and almost didn’t stay in Philadelphia.

“Once you have 17 people in the company with mortgages and me without, that pressured me to stay,” he says, “Then I grew attached to the area, built networks and planted some roots here and started Half.com.”

Since then, Philly has treated him well: Kopelman and his partners sold Half.com to eBay for $350 million in 2000, giving Philadelphia one its biggest tech “wins” in the Web 1.0 times. After starting and selling Turntide to Symantec in less than a year, Kopelman switched from entrepreneur to investor, making Philadelphia home to one of the most influential Internet investment firms in the world.

We sat down with Kopelman to talk about his take on Philadelphia, what kinds of companies he looks for and why Philly (and every other city) has no comparison.

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Startup Roundup: Baltimore visits Philly, RailBandit updates NJ Transit offering, TrapCall supporting Sprint

Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse out the small pieces that make our greater Startup ecosystem thrive. We want to keep you in touch with the innovations that we can’t quite get to covering, but that deserve highlight. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

Baltimore coworking space BeeHive visited IndyHall last week, according to the Philly coworking site’s newsletter. And at IndyHall’s weekly Show & Tell lunch meetup, several startups showed off their goods, like MyClin which claims to “revolutionize clinical trials,” and Johnny Bilotta‘s UI prototyping software for Photoshop and Illustrator.

We’ve received word from Ignite Philly 5 organizers about some of the speakers set for the March 2 event at Johnny Brenda’s. We’ve got limited details, and organizers anticipate changes in the schedule, but so far, Asheesh Laroia of OpenHatch will talk about food trucks and open source, Philly Startup Leaders‘ Blake Jennelle will discuss startups and nonprofit survival, Mike Levinson of DreamIt will offer ideas “that make it (and don’t),” and Happier.com Founder Andrew J. Rosenthal will tell you, mysteriously enough, “how to get people to like you.” Thank god for that.

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TNT: coIN Loft brings coworking to Wilmington

According to Wes Garnett, Delaware is the only mid-atlantic state that does not have a coworking space.

“It’s not just because no one has started it,” he says, “but because no one has even heard of coworking.”

Much like many Philadelphians, Garnett sees a northern neighbor taking technology talent from his city when there are plenty of reasons to stay home. Though Delaware is well-known as a tax shelter for large corporations, the state hasn’t exactly been rolling out the red carpet for entrepreneurs, something Garnett and his partners hope to change through coIN Loft.

“In 2007, Delaware was ranked 50 out of 50 for attracting entrepreneurs. The next year we jumped to 35,” he says. “Either way we suck.”

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Event Highlights for December 28 – January 3, 2010

The kids are home from school this week, and the events calendar looks like it.

Aside from an open house with a growing institution and a new member lunch with the Indyhall boys and girls, this calendar is as empty as reporter Sean Blanda‘s social calendar or, uhm, last week’s events roundup.

We can only assume we don’t have anything for the night of Dec. 31 because our technology and entrepreneurship community versions of New Year’s Eve are just like everyone else’s — and that might not involve getting up at 8 a.m. for the Mummer’s Day Parade, even if Kevin Bacon came to their rescue.

Everyone is sure to rebound for a big, bold 2010. We’re going to share our resolutions with you in January — seriously — so why don’t your tech ones with us? For now, the last week of events in 2009.. and one in 2010.

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Event Highlights for November 30—December 6, 2009

Updated 11/30, 10:24 a.m., with date and time edits.

Aaand we’re live.

We’re glad to be back in this big ‘ole city, and apparently you are, too—our calendar is packed solid with some great events.

We’ve even got a geographical spread throughout Philly’s neighborhoods, so if you can’t find something within walking distance, well, you haven’t visited our calendar. If not for the networking, get out for the fresh air—we know what it’s like being holed up in your home or office in front of that computer. Trust us. We know it all too well.

Independents Hall is launching a new monthly series of events to introduce the community to companies based in Philly and abroad, kicking-off with Apstrata, a business doing cloud-based application distribution. Man, that cloud voodoo blows our minds sometimes.

Net Tuesday is doing it like Oprah this month, except with a lot less tears and no free cars. The regular meetup introduces its new Book Unclub, where they’re talking books in a casual setting. We’d call it Oprah 2.0, but a second coming of the talk show diva frankly scares the bejesus out of us.

Agile Philly wants to teach you some new tricks to influencing folks around the office, sans Yoda. Finally, let loose at Philly Creative Jobs‘ Creative Mega Social. And yes, adding “Mega” to your event name does make it that much more impactful.

All events listed on the event calendar are free to attend. Be sure to check our complete calendar for more.

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Event highlights for the week of August 31 – September 6, 2009

Good God, it’s September already.

Which means it is time to stop blaming your recent lazy streak on the freggin’ hot August weather to prepare for a week chock-full of events. Actually, scratch that. You should prepare for a Tuesday chock-full of events.

Due to some strange alignment of the heavens, all of the events on our calendar happen to be taking place on Tuesday.

The only logical thing to do, of course, is to frantically try to attend all the events like that Flintstones episode where Fred has to be at Pebbles’ birthday party and the lodge on the same night.

First you’ll have to head on over to Buffalo Billiards to attend Net Tuesday, then hop over to Old City for Indy Hall’s birthday party. After you are done drinking with the Two Guys on Beer, you should cap it all off with the Linux meetup.
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Two IndyHall software projects featured in MacUpdate bundle

Does anyone get a little nostalgic when it comes to bundled software?

In the 90s it meant getting 25,000 games packed onto a CD or a complete reference library from researchers you never heard of: Mayo Clinique? Not so much.

But last night at midnight when MacUpdate announced its $49.99 Mac OS X spring promo bundle, it meant being able to grab licenses for two local Macintosh development projects along with nine other professional applications on the cheap.

Like, a $470 discount.

Included in the package, alongside well-known apps like Parallels Desktop 4 and Tech Tool Pro 5, is Old City’s own Multiplex and RipIt applications. By themselves, the companion DVD applications cost $53.

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Video walk-through of the new IndyHall coworking facility

A crew of Independents Hall workers constructing the new coworking facility before it opened. Photo courtesy of Alex Hillman.

Don’t mind the mess at IndyHall.

On Friday, May 1, co-founders Alex Hillman and Geoff DiMasi moved the dedicated coworking community into a spacious new office on Third and Church in Old City.

There are still a few more screws to tighten, that’s for sure. But while it might not be ready for white-glove treatment, you gotta give ‘em props for pulling off a complicated move in little more than a month.

Since announcing their decision to move from Strawberry Street, members have increased significantly, the community launched and sold out its first class as part of an education initiative planned for the old location, and everyone involved surely has some stories to tell.

We stopped by IndyHall on Friday to see how the move is going and toured the new spot-on video after the jump.

A special thanks to Drew Lazor of Philadelphia City Paper in assisting with this video. Be sure to check out Drew’s coverage of the IndyHall walk-thru at the Clog.

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