All in favor of giving the city that can claim to be the birthplace of this nation an extra day off for Independence Day say “aye.”

Great. Now that we gave ourselves an extra day for the weekend, you’ll be delighted to know that this week’s calendar features BBQs, hacking and happy hours galore.

Refresh Philly is taking a short break from trying to solve our city government’s technology problems to get together for a happy hour at Triumph. Come for the fellowship, stay to measure the huge brewing equipment to see if you can fit it in your basement.

The happy hours continue on Wednesday with Center City district‘s Sips event. PANMA and various marketing groups will be on hand to help you join the association that is right for you on what is the self-proclaimed “happiest happy hour.”

You will have to finish working on your time machine by Thursday as Philly Startup Leaders host a BBQ (previous coverage here) at the same time the Philly Cocoa Heads hold their monthly meetup.

And on Saturday, cap it all off with relaxing stroll through The Hacktory at the group’s Open Hack event.

All events listed on the event calendar are free to attend. Be sure to check our complete calendar for more information, or follow us past the jump.

Monday, July 6: Refresh Philly gets together for their bi-monthly happy hour giving new members a great chance to come out and get acquainted, while current members can catch up with one another. The event is being held at Triumph Brewery, which has the best burgers in Old City apart from the Snow White diner (yeah, I said it). One strange aspect of the happy hour: it’s being sponsored by a Washington DC-based Web design firm. 6 p.m. Old City. RSVP. [view more events]

Wednesday, July 8: Drink specials abound as Center City’s creative associations gather for a happy hour at Lucky Strikes. Though I personally believe bowling alleys to be the 5th circle of the underworld, the event will also feature free appetizers. Groups like PANMA, The Greater Philadelphia Film Office and various marketing and advertising associations will be in attendance waiting to accept you with open arms and $4 cocktails. 5 p.m. Center City. RSVP. [view more events]

Thursday, July 9: Philly Startup Leaders are celebrating summer in the city with a BBQ on South Street. Come for the community, and stay for the door prizes, which include an iPhone. See our complete coverage of the event from last week for more details. 5:30 p.m. South Street. RSVP. [view more events]

Thursday, July 9: If the holiday gave you enough BBQ to hold you over for a couple of weeks, head on over to the old Indy Hall for a the monthly meetup of the Cocoa Heads. The crew from TweetDeck will be on hand to talk about their trials and tribulations in porting the app onto the iPhone. The group is admittedly more suited for beginners, so come out and get a head start on developing the next iPhone app that doesn’t involve bodily functions. 7 p.m. Old City. RSVP. [view more events]

Saturday, July 11: Kicking around in my brain somewhere is a fan fiction where MacGyver discovers the Hacktory and we finally get the flying car, the cure for cancer and a way to buy Septa tokens at the Tioga El stop. The nonprofit is holding an Open Hack, which is exactly what it sounds like: a loosely structured block of time where the Hacktory opens up its space to all those interested. At the very least, go to congratulate  them for their $10,000 grant. 1 p.m. Fairmount. RSVP. [view more events]

Photo courtesy of The Hacktory.

The Hacktory has received a $10,000 grant from the Philadelphia branch of national financial and advisory service Nonprofit Finance Fund.

The money will be used to hire a consultant to help define a long-term sustainability plan to further the Fairmount-based group’s mission of promoting the use of technology in arts, Hacktory organizer Vanja Buvac told Technically Philly.

Since the grant was signed three weeks ago, Philly’s techno-hackers have been communicating with core community members and performing outreach for input on how the organization should grow, he says.

“What we’re hearing overwhelmingly is that the Hacktory empowers artists to embrace technology. Also, it empowers technologists to cross that boundary into art,” Buvac says.

“That’s what the people involved in the Hacktory are really passionate about.”

The organization held an open planning session Wednesday evening at Nonprofit Technology Resources on the 1500-block of Brandywine Street to discuss its future. Members envisioned expanding the organization as an artist and engineer incubator and as a more regularly scheduled education center, Hacktory planning coordinator and volunteer Georgia Guthrie says.

“They want to see more of what the Hacktory is doing already,” she says. “People mentioned that sometimes there’s no regular classes or there’s a lack of content on our Web site. It makes the Hacktory look like we’re not there, and people expect us to be.”

Guthrie, who has worked for nonprofit organizations Pennsylvania Humanities Council and Philadelphia Education Fund, is helping coordinate the grant planning.

When NFF first expressed interest in providing a grant, Hacktory organizers contacted like-minded groups like NEXUS/foundation for today’s art, Pig Iron Theatre Company and Fleisher Ollman Gallery for advice.

The Hacktory partnered with NEXUS to showcase more than a dozen art/tech mash-ups in Unintended Uses, a month-long exhibit that we covered in February.

After Hacktory organizers attend planning sessions on June 19 and June 20, they will solicit community members with a survey of their “hopes and dreams” of the organization’s future.

“Our pie in the sky is to have an actual location where you can go and either bring your project and ask someone for help, take a class and work on your project, or see something cool in terms of an art exhibit,” Guthrie says.

Entrepreneurs are holding the biggest event on our events calendar this week. Join the city’s diverse range of entrepreneurs Thursday night -including more than 40 that have signed up to talk or show off their products – for an evening of thought-provoking business innovation with the Philly Startup Leaders at their Entrepreneur Expo. You’re guaranteed to set that brainstorming into overdrive, and who knows, you might meet the investor that will change your life.

The rest of the week, Bloblive is back and more “open” and “mic”-y than ever. SEO Grail will see what they can do to help get your Web site to the top of Google, but don’t expect miracles, people. Last, the Hacktory‘s Open Hack! is back after complications last month.

Events listed in our highlights are free to attend. Please check our Events calendar for more information and read more after the jump.

Monday, March 30: Like last week, Bloblive will be allowing newcomers free admission to its open mic session of entrepreneurial ideas. After your first time, it’s gonna cost some beans, so take this opportunity to visit Philly’s pseudo mini-TED conference for free. And to be frank, there’s nothing else happenin’ Monday. 6:00 p.m., Center City. RSVP. [View more events]

Tuesday, March 31: Join others interested in Search Engine Optimization techniques that can make your site hits explode at this week’s monthly SEO Grail meetup. Discussions will include client expectation and campaign management or competitor analysis using LinkScape and SEMRush. 7:00 p.m., Ardmore, Montgomery County. RSVP. [View more events]

Thursday, April 2: Philly Start-up Leaders will host the first annual Entrepreneur Expo: Innovation on Display. More than 40 entrepreneurs will show off their grandest ideas, with a few select all-stars giving presentations. For such a large expo, we’re excited that it’s free to the public. Expect the city’s best entrepreneurs, students, educators and investors to be there. So, why not you, too? 6:00p.m., Center City West. Details. [View more events]

Saturday, April 4: The Hactory will host their monthly Open Hack! in their Fairmount digs. Last month’s event was canceled, so if you’ve been itching to hack some Arduino and more, stop by for a casual Saturday afternoon of electronics mischief. 1:00 p.m., Fairmount. Details. [View more events]

Every Monday morning, Technically Philly will preview the best free tech events in Philadelphia and the surrounding region. See others here. Check our comprehensive events calendar here.

Consider stopping by Johnny Brenda’s in Fishtown that evening to catch just one presentation at the next planned IgnitePhilly speaking event. Or take those minutes and give a presentation of your own. The third in a series of Ignites was officially announced yesterday in a blog post written by Geoff DiMasi of P’unk Ave, who says that organizers are currently accepting recommendations from the community for potential speakers, 15 in all, before the May event.

“Are you working on a rad project, have something interesting to say or know someone that is?,” he asks in the post. “We are looking for inspiring speakers that are doing cool things in Philadelphia.”

Ignite gives presenters a chance to fire off the details of their ideas or projects in five minutes or less with 20 backing slides. No sales pitches or shameless self-promotion accepted. Still confused? Just watch the video presentations from the first and the second Ignites. It’ll take much less than five minutes to realize the potential to learn, share knowledge, and grab one of JB’s frosty, craft-brewed beers while you’re at it. Beer may seem like a side note, but its an integral point of contrast to the university lecture setting that the organizers are trying to steer clear of.

We called DiMasi to glean some additional details and found out why he thinks Ignite is 2009′s answer to Fugazi, after the jump:

Given the success of the first two events, which featured presentations about creative arts, media, startups, sustainability, tech, and more, one has to wonder why the organizers opted against upgrading to a larger venue. DiMasi tells us that they turned down offers for space from the Free Library and the idea of an outdoor event at a park in Northern Liberties, for the charged, excited atmosphere available at Johnny Brenda’s.

“It’s like the Fugazi or hardcore punk shows I remember going to. If you don’t make it in, it makes it that much more special for the people who did,” he said.

But don’t think that the organizers are leaving you high and dry. This time around, they’re planning on streaming video from the second floor balcony stage to an additional monitor upstairs, and hopefully, DiMasi says, to a monitor in the bar on the first floor as well.

It’s too early to tell who will be presenting, says DiMasi. The event’s organizers, which include representatives from P’unk Ave, The Hacktory, and Make:Philly, haven’t even officially met about the May event, yet. But DiMasi suggested that there’s a strong possibility of inviting several people already elected in his IgnitePhilly post. Brian McTear, executive director of Weathervane Music Organization, what say ye? Same to you, Habari developer Owen Winkler. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the competition (which DiMasi is quick to point out is no competition at all). Whoever it may be, DiMasi hopes that speakers are local to Philly, although he’s not opposed to innovators from other cities stopping by.

DiMasi hopes to wrap-up the engagement list by early April, so head on over to the comment section of the announcement and add your opinion. And if there’s no shame in your game, why not suggest yourself?

Our witty, nearly non-sensical preview of the show, along with the where and when‘s, after the jump.

• Michiel van der Zanden hand paints YouTube clips, three dimensional computer models, and video games to wreck your reality.
• Don Miller hacks NES cartridges to uniquely market underground music shows, and perhaps more importantly, pay homage to the demoscene programmers of decades past.
• Reade Vaisman will display his Frankensteined curcuit-bent noise box, complete with messy wiring and all the glitches you’ve come to miss since vacuum tubes burned out.
• Sarah Muehlbauer makes a fashion statement. Actually, she belts it out like a Greek god. Muehlbauer’s wearable, modernized pan pipe is fashionable, yet functional. Suburban Station commuters will be instantly smittened into donating dollar bills.
• Kathy Marmor wants you to play with your environment, and with any luck, laugh about it too. But it’s deeper than that, dude. It’s about constructions of identity.
• Fernando Orellana‘s radio mechanism replicates humankind’s search for the omnipotent by recording signals transmitted by the turn of this General Electric’s dial until it finds a match. This isn’t the first time Radio searched for a God; it’s first lesson in heaven-hunting was when television left the industry for dead.
• Though it appears to be the long tail, Zachary Stadel‘s sculpture is about tipping points. In his series, he reorganizes the physical construction of a painting from its stretcher bars to its paint to examine presentation in various media.
• Wil Lindsay‘s ancient monolithic circuit box (read: Commodore) analyzes fingertips like a lie detector and maps psychological make-up. At least, it did until it was abandoned in a building in upstate New York. If Psychological analysis involves only two buttons, count us in.
• Chris Vecchio is a shoe gazer. Or he was, when he stumbled upon a tiny circuit board sitting in a gutter. He hacked it back together, complete with a speaker. It’s tiny, tinny voice chilled his bones: “You shall perish,” it said. Lucky for Chris, the battery died.

Crane Arts Building
1400 N. American Street

Exhibition runs Thurs., Feb. 12 – Fri. March 6
Wednesday through Sunday 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.

[NEXUS/foundation for today's art in Philadelphia via The Hacktory]