@IndyHall64 - 1 week down and still rockin'

As of last week IndyHall, a coworking space based in Olde City, Philadelphia, opened it's doors to its new 4000+ square foot office.  IndyHall nearly tripled its amount of usable space and brought in a huge slew of new memberships.  It was and still is one amazing, dynamic crowd of people.

Whether you're a graphic designer, programmer, musician or IT-techy-nerd (me), you'll fit into the IndyHall scene.  With permanent and part time memberships, there's something for everyone.  I wanted to let you know my experience (and how great it is) after week one in the new office -- In a bulleted top 5-style list.

• The space is huge - While we were painting, drilling, running wires, occasionally drinking and setting up the new space it didn't look that large.  It was larger than the old place but it was impossible to envision what it would look like with the 30+ desks we have now.  It's awesome.  We have so many new members and so much more room to spread out while working.


• Having a kitchen (a real one) is pretty freakin' rad - It's easy, while working as an independent (or full time, working independently), to forget how great a home-cooked meal is.  Now that we have a nice kitchen, I've seen many more people bringing in food and even cooking.  This morning I walked in to Dana cooking eggs and bacon!


• A real sound system really make a world of difference - In the old space, we had a speaker setup on one side of the office.  The problem with this is that it's either too loud for the guy sitting next to it or too quiet for the person sitting on the other side of the room.  Sure you could have brought your own head phones but sometimes it's nice to let someone else run the music juke box.  The new system at IndyHall64 sounds great.  Chris Jurney picked out a great sound system that distributes music evenly through the whole place.


• Integrated coffee - Okay, this machine was also at the old space (IndyHall Classic) but I have to reiterate how great it is to have robust coffee maker in-house.  It not only saves money but also time.  While Olde City Coffee is right around the corner, it still takes a few minutes to get out and back.  And in the IT world, this can make or break a project.


• Super-awesome-incredible-talented-intelligent-sometimes-quirky people - Anyone can make a shared office space.  Get a bunch of people with some extra cash and rent some floor in a nice building.  That's the easy part.  What Alex and crew have done at IndyHall is brought a whole slew of amazing people together to form one kick-ass community.  Everyone that works out of IndyHall brings something unique to the table.  From Two Guys on Beer and round3media to RipItApp and incredibly complicated music-analyzing software, the people here have it all.  That's the best part of working in this new office space.  We can now fit so many more great minds and great people into one place.

If you haven't yet had the chance to stop by, I highly recommend you do.  It's located at 20 N. 3rd Street (2nd Floor) in Philadelphia, PA.  It's a short walk from the El and there's parking right around the corner if you need it.  When you stop in, be sure to give me a shout.  I'm now a lite member and I love it.

Corrected: A type-oh.