Posted by Alex Hillman on 09-02-2008 under Uncategorized
We’ve all got tons to do this morning after a long holiday weekend, but we all wanted to share a brief thank you to everyone who contributed and came out to our 1 year birthday party. We all had a blast. There are so many people to thank, from our 8-bit musical performers (check them out again at the upcoming IgnitePhilly2), to the crew that shot and edited our video walkthrough, the staff at Triumph, everyone who came in from out of town, and everyone who’s showed us love along the way.
From the bottom of Geoff and my hearts, thank you.
It’s been a helluva year. Let’s make the next one even better!
WOW! We’re so impressed. We know we set the bar high with our goal, but we’re still really happy to report that the sponsorship drive for the IndyHall birthday party has gone really well. To date, we’ve raised over $6000 (40% of our lofty goal), but that gives us a great night of food and drinks ahead of us!
But it’s not over!
Our ChipIn widget shut off this morning due to the deadline we had for logos being printed, however, by request we’ve opened it back up! We’ll continue accepting your contributions up until the party begins at 6pm on Sunday night, and remember, every little bit helps the night go on, and on, and on!! Unfortunately, the shirts and decals are already at the printer, so we can’t add to that, but you’re contributions will get you a mention/link on the site, as well as a HUGE shout out at the birthday party!
And don’t forget, the $10,000 sponsorship opportunity that will result in me getting the IndyHall logo as a tattoo and Geoff shaving his head is still open ;).
It was just pointed out to me that our Facebook event was set for Labor Day weekend…2009. You can rest assured we’ll have a big party that weekend as well, but THIS YEAR’s event has been updated.
Our RSVPs are now available on Facebook and Upcoming:
We’re excited to announce that Strands, a people-powered discovery engine, has stepped up with our largest sponsorship so far of $3000, more than doubling our party funds!
Long time east coast tech supporter and lover of all things Philly, Drew Olanoff, recently began working with them as a community evanglist and came to us interested in working togther with Strands for our birthday party event.
Join us Saturday Night at IndyHall “StrandUp”!
In addition to participating in our party on Sunday night as a large-scale sponsor, Strands will be hosting a pre-party “StrandUp” event at IndyHall on Saturday night, from 6:30 to 7:30pm.
We’re expecting lots of people on Sunday Night, many of whom are around for the whole weekend.
After the first successful Strandup during Gomedex 8 in Seattle this past weekend, Drew is bringing the event to Philly as a mixer-style pre-party hangout. EVERYONE is invited! You don’t have to be an IndyHall member, you don’t even have to be a geek! Just come and hang out with the IndyHall/Philly crew. This is a great chance for our out-of-town guests to get acquainted. This is also a great chance to see IndyHall if you (somehow) haven’t yet!
There’s no strings attached. Only Strands! (sorry, I know that was bad).
We’ll bring the snacks (EPIC NOMS), all you need to do is bring your personality and interest in meeting a bunch of people and breaking out of the techie echo-chamber!
Posted by Alex Hillman on 08-25-2008 under Uncategorized
The artwork created by Johnny Bilotta for the IndyHall website has made the rounds: first, this website. Then, IndyHall business cards. Since then, we’ve had a feweditions of the IndyHallt-shirt as well as the recent addtion of a batch of mugs! And while we LOVE Johnny’s design, we know that a year later, it may be time to incorporate the stylings of someone new!
The IndyHall birthday is a week away, and we thought that it’d be awesome to have a community-contributed birthday edition of our t-shirt. So between now and Wednesday night at midnight, we’re accepting submissions for ideas. You can download the current shirt design EPS for Illustrator, or PSD for Photoshop.
We need the back of the shirt available for sponsor logos, but any area of the shirt currently occupied by the current design in the template is fair game. We’d love to see your remix of our logo, to the tune of “Happy First Birthday” or something of that nature. Our favorite, both visually and creative concept, will be printed this weekend along with the sponsor logos on the back and will be handed out for free (thanks ChoiceShirts for donating the shirts!) to the first 50 people to arrive at the Party on Saturday Sunday, and the artist’s work will live on in this commemorative edition tee.
Upload your designs below, and we’ll see everyone this weekend!
Exciting news as we enter our second week of sponsorship drives: we’ve got our first major sponsor!
On Friday afternoon, I got a very nice email from Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital, an early stage VC firm here in Philadelphia. Josh is a Philly native, has been part of the founding of a number of successful Philly startups, including Infonautics Corporation, Half.com, and TurnTide. I was thrilled to hear from Josh, simply to read his note of congratulations on our first year at IndyHall. Reading on, I found that First Round was sponsoring the “first round of drinks” for our party: with a generous $1000 sponsorship!
Additional sponsors we’ve had join since the last update on Friday:
Thanks so much to ALL of our sponsors. We’re 2 weeks away from our goal, and we have made some good headway! This week we hope to announce a few more of our HUGE LOGO and FREAKING HUGE LOGO sponsors, so contact us if you are interested.
Posted by Alex Hillman on 08-15-2008 under Uncategorized
On Tuesday we announced the details for our 1 year birthday party. Much like the RipIt/iSepta launch party, we’re turning to the community with a whole slew of sponsorship levels.
We’ve had our first round of contributers, and we wanted to thank them! In chronological order of contributions:
That puts a nice dent in our goal, but we’ve still got a ways to go! Check out our sponsorship levels, find one that fits for you, and help spread the word!
In our never-ending quest to conquer the beast protecting the gates of knowledge, we’ve added one a new member to our gang of warriors.
This month we begin the IndyHall Lecture series, and we’re kicking it off with something completely new: a discussion of video game artificial intelligence, specific to battlefield games.
That’s right. IndyHall member Chris Jurney, who works for Relic Entertainment, is going to talk to us about some of the underlying AI systems behind one of the games he’s worked on, Company of Heroes.
Thanks to Chris for kicking off this series with something we’re sure will be interesting to a whole new audience, and hopefully catch the eye of our friends over at Geekadelphia.
IndyHall’s office is almost 1 year old. We signed our lease on August 10th, 2007, began occupying the space on August 13th, and over the next 2 weeks, built out our intial office. At the end of August, we threw our inaugral party.
It’s August 2008. That means we’ve been at this for a year, which still blows my mind. It’s time to celebrate.
There are 31 days from today until the end of August. In the next 31 days, we’re going to put our birthday party together, but we’re not going to do it alone. Just like IndyHall came together as a community, so will our first birthday party.
So here to explain what we’re doing is…well…me!
OK! So you have 1 week from today to give us your best connections to the raddest venues in Philly.
The constraints are:
Hold lots of people
Serves alcohol
A stage/sound system would be really helpful for some of our other ideas
Outdoor is cool, but remember the weather is unpredictable!
You have one week to complete this challenge, if you choose to accept it. Let’s make this the best birthday party ever by open sourcing it and powering it by the community that makes Philadelphia a place we love to call our home!
On Friday afternoon, I got a very nice email from Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital, an early stage VC firm here in Philadelphia. Josh is a Philly native, has been part of the founding of a number of successful Philly startups, including Infonautics Corporation, Half.com, and TurnTide. I was thrilled to hear from Josh, simply to read his note of congratulations on our first year at IndyHall. Reading on, I found that First Round was sponsoring the “first round of drinks” for our party: with a generous $1000 sponsorship!
In our never-ending quest to conquer the beast protecting the gates of knowledge, we’ve added one a new member to our gang of warriors.