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.

Wednesday, July 21: If you’re not shore-bound this week, don’t despair. There are plenty of good times to be had right here in the city at the Philly Startup Leaders BBQ Bash. This long-awaited event, formerly scheduled as the PSL Happy Hour earlier this month, features all the tech-talk you’d expect at a PSL event plus appetizers and drinks by the river. Oh, and did we mention the first round is on – ahem – First Round Capital? 6:30 p.m. Manayunk RSVP [view more events]

Thursday, July 22: The folks at Independents Hall are at it again. After last week’s town hall, members and the interested public are invited to bring all their health insurance questions down to the coworking space this Thursday. Local expert Betsy Spivak will be answering health insurance inquiries and holding open discussion all day. 9:00 a.m. Old City INFO [view more events]

Thursday, July 22: This month’s Philadelphia Graphic Designers Meetup features a web marketing presentation hosted by Nate Nichols. This chat about the social media revolution is one not to be missed by the professional or the beginner.  6:30 p.m. Center City INFO [view more events]

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.

Though Indy Hall has been hosting less events than in the past, attendees were able to rattle over nearly a dozen that have taken place in the past few months such as a blood drive and Cocoa Heads, a Mac-focused programming meetup.

Hillman and DiMasi pledged to return more events to the space and encouraged members to develop more programming.

“Our default answer will always be ‘yes’,” said Hillman.

Trouble in the Hall

DiMasi and Hillman spent nearly half of the gathering revealing that one member had been caught stealing $2,000 worth of goods from the space, including the camera used to film popular video podcast Two Guys on Beer. The guilty party has since been caught, but the scare has forced Indy Hall to re-examine who should hold a key to the space.

Instead of spending money on cameras and other security equipment Hillman and DiMasi suggested that a return to more social events as well as becoming stricter with key privileges should help keep Indy Hall safe. DiMasi went as far to say that members be as friendly and conversational as if they were living in a small town.

“It’s an excuse to pretend you are in Minnesota,” said DiMasi after his suggestion that members work hard to know their coworkers. “Everyone says Philly is cool once you get past the shell, so let’s get past it quicker.”

New events and meetups will have to be “co-hosted” by a key-holding full time member. Any new key holders will have to be “signed off” by three existing key-holding members.

“We haven’t been going to the bar for lunch, we haven’t been hanging on the weekends,” said Hillman. “It’s that trust that allowed us to get away with some of the things other places couldn’t.”

As for the stolen goods, Indy Hall plans on selling t-shirts to make up for the smaller items. A local brewery and National Mechanics are partnering to sell a special brew where all proceeds will go to helping Two Guys in Beer purchase a new rig.

Disclosure: Hillman is a sponsor of Technically Philly.

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.

As always edited for length and clarity. To read the complete interview transcript which includes three times as many questions, follow this link.

What would it take to have First Round located in Philadelphia as opposed to West Conshohocken?

My sense is that I don’t think we’ve lost any deals in the city because we weren’t willing to travel there or the entrepreneur wasn’t willing to travel here. So for me its just about quality of life in terms of ability to get home for dinner, get back to the office and go back and forth. You know we work on two time zones: the east coast and the west coast. If [the office] was further away I might not be as productive.

Is that the struggle for First Round? Because now there’s a Philadelphia, San Francisco and New York office and there’s four of you?

I might actually argue that while I have a strong network in Philly, my network is Silicon Valley is just as strong if not stronger. So when I’m trying to help an entrepreneur on the West Coast I feel like I can be extremely helpful in terms of recruiting and strategy.

And I’m out west enough that the proximity challenge isn’t insurmountable. So we’ve had to invest to do that. We’ve had to build an office in New York, we’ve had to build an office in the valley and we’ve had to build a team in all of those areas and build a footprint. We view ourselves as four partners that just happen to be working out of whatever office they are at right now.

You are almost the ideal Wharton grad for Philadelphia. You come from out of the area, you go to Wharton, you contribute jobs to the local economy. So I wonder many Wharton grads don’t decide to stick around.

My path was more of the exception.

Why do you think that is?

Had I not started a company right out of school and not had any employees, I don’t know if I would have stayed here.

Let’s try to take a different metaphor. I’ve come to see Philadelphia as a place that has a lot great theaters. And there are 70 schools in this area one of the highest densities of schools out there. There are a lot of people at these schools that want to be actors or actresses. And what I’ve seen though is that if you are a graduating student and are an actor or actress not one of them says “I want to be king of the Forrest Theater.”

They move to Broadway. And that’s where the ecosystem that they play in is [established]. I’d say that Philadelphia, as a tech hub, there are definitely bright spots and it is getting brighter. The fact that Technically Philly exists and it didn’t 18 months ago is telling. You have Philly Startup Leaders and Indy Hall. There’s a lot of groups. I think that’s wonderful and I think that’s improving the Philadelphia start-up scene… but I think it’s still hard to compete with Hollywood.

Maybe its an uphill battle, or maybe its misguided? Or maybe we should just try and play to our strengths of pharma?

I’m a big believer in Philly. I’ve started several companies here that have been successful, I’ve invested in companies that have been successful and I’ve met lots of quality of entrepreneurs here. I would not want to discourage anyone from trying to improve on Philly’s tech scene. But I also don’t know if you even need to compare.

New York has a great Chinatown, Philly has a strong Chinatown and they’re good Chinatowns. But stop trying to compete with China.

Most of our readers have lived here since 2002, 2003, not really part of that first generation of online startups like you were. So what have you’ve seen is the biggest difference from the CDNow and Half days versus now?

We’ve invested in almost every major tech market in the country, so one of the things I’ve seen when we compare Philly is that we tend to think we have a really good start-up generation right now. But for whatever reason, the past generation isn’t as engaged.

There’s not that institutional memory from the first round?

We are seeing a lot of first-time entrepreneurs in the region, which is great. But this is the seed-planting stage. You are going to see 100 of these entrepreneurs, ten of them might have some level of success and they might have management teams of five people, so they are new entrepreneurs that will go out and plant. It’s takes some time to move.

Basically, you’re sitting here with your first generation of seed planting, whereas out west you have the redwood forest.

What are the characteristics you look for in a entrepreneur when funding them?

For a start-up, I like to fund a heat-seeking missile. It used to be that, 30 years ago you, had to aim missiles. From the moment you launched it, you press go and you have no ability to change the course of that missile one you launched it.

But the heat-seeking missiles are a modern invention that you launch and it adjusts and looks for the heat signature it looks for the target. And if the target is moving it changes. It can start off heading north and then head west or south.

What new trends and things are popping up that get you excited?

At the macro-level, I think there is a massive disruption that’s occurring.

In what way?

We are really focused on the cloud and software as a service, and we are very focused on mobile. I think geography and location-based services is [also] really important.

I think that the concept of redefining the data sets that are available online and their accessibility online is a big trend. Sort of what we have been calling the “implicit web”.

Sort of the API-azation of our lives.

Yeah. When you think about it, it used to be that all your data was offline. But as more and more started happening online you left more and more digital breadcrumbs. Like myself: you wanna know what TV shows I like? TiVo knows that. Want music i like? Apple knows that. What movies I like? Netflix knows that. Where I eat? Open Table knows that. What concerts I go to? Ticketmaster knows that.

So historically all of that data has been in silos… Now once those silos open up APIs and you connect things to them and through them, I think that is really powerful and transformative.

Every Friday, Technically Philly brings you an interview with a leader or innovator in Philadelphia s technology community. See others here.

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.

MIGHT BE WORTH YOUR TIME

Mobile train scheduling app RailBandit has announced v2.4, including track assignments for NJ Transit. With the new feature, users can see which track a train is set to depart. If you want to depart on them. Jersey joke? Natch—two of our co-founders are native.

Tom’s River-based TrapCall, which lets users unblock anonymous phone calls, has launched a new dashboard with better organization and simplified design. The company also announced support for Sprint mobile phone service.

GIVE A GLANCE

University City-based mobile payment service Venmo gets some national coverage from GigaOm. “[A] big issue with Venmo is the privacy and security of tying payments directly to your phone number. [Co-founder Andrew] Kortina said Venmo will allow a high level of user control over every transaction, therefore protecting users,” GigaOm’s Liz Gannes writes. We’ve been hard at work testing the service.

DreamIt Ventures incubated ticket marketplace startup SeatGeek gets some love on Lifehacker.

Startup Roundup will post weekly on Wednesdays until there’s not a Philly startup story left to link to on the Internet. See others here.

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.”

The life-long Delaware resident, along with business partners Pedro Moore and Steve Roettger, is leading the charge to create coIN Loft, a coworking space in Wilmington, Delaware. The trio is anticipating opening in March and the space will have 17 desks available in three tiered memberships: basic (a few times per month), part-time (two to three days per week) and full-time. Members of coIN Loft will also be eligible to participate in crowdsourced client projects.

The origins of coIN Loft – short for “community innovation” – stemmed from a October article in Entrepreneur Magazine citing coworking as an upcoming trend in the startup world. Both Roettger and Garnett saw the space as a chance to change Delaware’s lack of an entrepreneurial mindset as well as a way to attract clients to Verge, their Wilmington-based company that offers consulting services to early-stage startup companies.

The business partners began immediately looking for a space. Something that, as any of the Indy Hall founders would tell you, should come only after a community is established, something Garnett acknowledges.

The floor plan for coIN Loft. (click to enlarge).

“We did everything backwards, it’s in our nature to be running really fast to the things we want to do,” he says.

In researching a space, the group also came across a real estate developer shopping around a coworking space that named “Verge Coworking,” confusing given coIN’s consulting gig.

“It’s like in school when you wanted to talk to a girl you thought was hot and she turned out to be your best friend’s girlfriend,” says Garnett. “It was like the Twilight Zone.”

That coworking space eventually fell through, but that won’t stop coIN Loft’s urgency. The group just signed a year lease, and the group, using roughly $25,000 of outside investment and $25,000 of their own funds, is beginning to renovate the space as weather allows.

“In Delaware things just take forever,” he says of coIN Loft’s urgency. “People really want to see things change but most people just sit on sidelines.”

coIN Loft’s organizers say it has a handful of verbal commitments for full-time members and has seen interest in the Wilmington community as a next step for the city finding its identity. The community, which has already held two Ignite events, even created an entire neighborhood dedicated to housing creative professionals.

“If we could build the reputation of coIN up,” he says, “it will make people say:  ’These guys [in Wilmington] are just as talented as anyone else’.”

Every Monday, Technically Not Tech will feature people, projects, and businesses that are involved with Philly’s tech scene, but aren’t necessarily technology focused. See others here.

Full Disclosure: Independents Hall co-founder Alex Hillman is a current sponsor of Technically Philly.

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.

Wednesay, December 30: Hacker DIY space Hive 76, fresh from showing off new digs, is hosting another of its weekly open houses, and someone is promising pizza. 8:00 p.m. Center City. INFO. [view more events]

Friday, January 1: Everyone needs to learn to play together, and the new year won’t stop them. Those coworkers at Indyhall are having a new member lunch. Sometimes we get a seat right next to them at Nat Mechanics and talk really loudly about how much we love working in our cubicles for the man 1:30 p.m. Old City. INFO. [view more events]

A third event? We suggest you cruise uwishunu for the next week and find a kick ass New Year’s Eve event and blast it out to everyone else. Whoever tweets us (@technicallyPHL) the best suggest will win the honor of buying us a.. several beers.

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.

Tuesday, December 1: Indy Hall is introducing a new monthly event series to introduce interesting projects from Philly and abroad to the local community. The coworking space’s “Meet the…” series kicks-off with a demo from VP of Engineering at Apstrata, a cloud-based technology for storing and distributing rich applications for businesses. Have your iPhone and distribute data to it, too. 6:00 p.m. Old City. RSVP. [view more events]

Tuesday, December 1: NetSquared Net Tuesday brings a new concept to the table, one we’re certainly excited to see. We’re talking the regular meetup’s “Book Unclub,” where attendees are to talk about books related to social media, nonprofit technology and social change. There’s already a healthy spreadsheet list of 28 book recommendations, which itself should be a great resource for any tech-head. Yeah that’s right, we said we’re excited about reading. Chalk it up to grammar school propaganda posters. 6:30 p.m. Gayborhood. DETAILS. [view more events]

Wednesday, December 1: Agile Philly has some Jedi Mind Tricks stuff going on. Inspired by Allan Cohen’s and David Bradford’s Influence Without Authority, Audrey Troutt will share how she’s been helping to shape the course of the organization he’s involved with, using subtle tactics. “While I haven’t been successful at introducing most of my ideas,” she writes, “my team and my organization have adopted a few new practices in the last six months and have done so in a way that felt like all sides saw the value and naturally agreed to participate.” Sounds like a book that should be shared at Net Tuesday’s book club. 6:30 p.m. Center City. DETAILS. [view more events]

Thursday, December 3: The holidays mean plenty and plenty of drinks to be had. Start it off right at Philly Creative Guide‘s Creative Mega Social. Last year, 400 peeps attended the creative professional gathering, and this year’s event—held at North Bowl—could be better than ever. We can say from experience that the more drinks are had, the lower the bowling score, but take some advice from a Willie Nelson lyric: “There’s a lot of doctors that tell me / I’d better stop putting it down / But there’s more old drunks / Than there are old doctors / So I guess I’d better have another round.” 6:00 p.m. Northern Liberties. RSVP. [view more events]

If you have an event that you think we should be listing, email us or fill out our submission form for best results. We promise that no submission falls in to the contact form netherworld.

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.

Tuesday, September 1: At Philly NetSquared, speaker Judah Frest will look at the best Web portals you can use to raise money for your non-profit. Frest is the President of Buzzing4Change, a charity focused on gathering college students to donate hair for the Locks of Love charity. 6:30 p.m. Center City. RSVP. [view more events]

Tuesday, September 1: The Philadelphia Linux Users’ group (fans of the third most popular operating system) will be gathering at the University of the Sciences (the third most popular university in University City) to talk about women in free and open source software. Set to speak is Elizabeth Krumbach who also runs a Princess Leia fan site. 7:00 p.m. University City. INFO. [view more events]

Tuesday, September 1: Well wouldn’t you know, local coworking space Indy Hall is turning two this month. And in true Indy Hall fashion, the event is being combined with the 100th episode of the Indy Hall Labs podcast Two Guys on Beer who will be holding an open challenge to drink all challengers under the table. I may have made that last part up. To attend, head on over to National Mechanics and be sure to bring your iPhone — the bar allows you to vote for the next song on the jukebox using the “remote” application. 7:00 p.m. Old City. RSVP. [view more events]

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.

Both products were born and raised in IndyHall, and one is a product of software incubator IndyHall Labs. As sweet a deal as it may seem for consumers, maybe the developers are the ones most hyped about the opportunity.

“It’s a massive vote of confidence for the quality of apps that Labs is producing,” IndyHall co-founder and Labs co-organizer Alex Hillman said in a telephone interview.

Still, that $470 is coming out of someone’s pocket, right?

As members of the two development teams (which borrow members from one another) passed a phone around the co-working facility answering questions – and as downloads skyrocketed on the bundle’s sales ticker – Multiplex’s Co-Lead Developer David Martorana hesitated on answering how his team can afford to offer such a deep discount.

“It is a promotional opportunity to get a large audience through an established institution,” he said after a long pause. “It all pans out as a great promotional opportunity for us. We all agreed to do it because we believe in the longevity of IndyHall Labs.”

A Twitter search for the promotion reveals 25 pages of conversation concerning the discount after 13 hours of being available. Since noon, 2,000 bundles sold.

Jason Allum, who leads development on RipIt and co-leads alongside Martorana on Multiplex said that though the decision to include the products in the bundle was mulled over, it was worth the risk.

“We’ve been getting crushed. [MacUpdate] did 25,000 units last year. It’s safe to say we’re going to blow that out this year,” he said.

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.