stellargirl returns

Refresh Philly starts tonight!

Refresh Philly, part of the Refreshing Cities phenomenon, has come to our fine city, starting tonight!

The Refresh Manifesto is as follows:

• Let's Gather Great Minds
• Let's Share All Of Our Knowledge
• Let's All Grow And Learn
• Let's Promote Local Talent
• Let's Be More Than We Think Can Be
• Let's Make Our Cities Better

Our premiere event includes two great presentations. Tom Boutell of P'unk Ave will be leading a talk on Symfony and Phil Charron & Russ Starke of Think Brownstone will be inspiring us with Experience Design!

I am really excited to be a part of kicking off what will surely be an exciting series of speakers. Mark your calendars for future dates, Refresh Philly will take place on the first Monday of each month at the Comcast Center. January is the exception, but we'll be back again on February 2nd!

If you'd like to attend tonight, please RSVP on Facebook.  Stay tuned to @refreshphilly on Twitter for up to the minute updates and information, including a link to watch a live stream tonight!

REFRESH PHILLY
Tonight!
6:00 to 8:30pm
The Comcast Center

1701 John F Kennedy Blvd
RSVP REQUIRED

geeks who give: philabundance food drive & tweetup!

Mark your calendars! One week from today on Tuesday December 9th, will be the kickoff event for a new Philly group: Geeks Who Give!  The first event will be a Food Drive & Tweetup to benefit Philabundance.  Fork You will be doing a live demo and there will lots of fun prizes and drink specials. National Mechanics, our faithful friends, will play host to this exciting charity event!  The cost of admission is a minimum of 5 non-perishable food items (canned, boxed, no need of refrigeration).  Let's do all we can to help Philabundance help others! Hope to see you there!

Geeks Who Give
Philabundance Food Drive & Tweetup
Tuesday December 9
6 to 9pm
National Mechanics
22 S 3rd St

Cost of Admission: a minimum of 5 non-perishable food items (don't be afraid to bring more!)

are you coming to barcamp philly?

I've been a total blog slacker these last few weeks, but I actually have a pretty decent excuse. I've been really busy helping plan BarCamp Philly, happening on Saturday November 8th at UArts, as well as putting lots of effort into keeping the BCP website so fresh and so clean and totally up to date.

I am super excited about BarCamp and you should be too!  Chances are, if you know me personally, you've already heard me go on about it, but if you haven't, I will give you the nutshell summary.  BarCamp is an ad-hoc user-generated (un)conference where likeminded people come together, usually in a setting where people can break into groups (classroom situations are ideal), share thoughts and ideas, participate, collaborate, etc.  There are no pre-planned speakers or schedules. The attendees are the presenters (if they so choose).  Check out some of the people coming to BarCamp Philly!

The event is totally FREE to attend and you even get a t-shirt! You'll also get the opportunity to chat with people who are doing cool stuff all over the Philadelphia region. We've even got some great folks from NYC coming, and I am sure points further than that.  We have plenty of fun events in the works before and after the event, so be sure to visit the BarCamp Philly website often to stay on top of things.

Last but not least, registration is required. It's really key that we have a sense of how many people are attending and we do have to cap it at some point to make sure that we don't exceed capacity of the event location.  So if you are thinking of coming and haven't formally registered yet, please do it today!

reminder: ignite philly THIS wednesday 6/11!

Just a friendly reminder that Ignite Philly is mere days away! I know many of you already have it on your calendar and have intercepted it numerous ways across the blogosphere, but some of my readers aren't plugged in 24/7... so this is for you!

For more information, check out an article profiling the event in Friday's Philadelphia Business Journal. Also, the Ignite Philly website has completely up to date event and speaker information, and the twitter updates have been rolling in.

If you're still having doubts, you should come for this guy, Geoff DiMasi, an Ignite Philly founder and one of the Philly creative community's biggest champions:

ignite philly is coming on june 11th!

"If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds?"

Come to Ignite Philly on Wednesday June 11th at Johnny Brenda's and find out! This is a FREE event!

"Ignite is a series of speakers talking about inspiring projects for 5 minutes. The presentations can be serious, funny, or somewhere in between. We just hope that it would help ignite something in someone."

Featured speakers include: the iSepta guys, Alex Hillman of Indy Hall, Scott and Marisa of Fork You, Kristin Thompson of the Future of Music Coalition, 100K house, and many more!

Stay tuned by visiting the Ignite Philly website and by following ignitephilly on Twitter. Also, check out all the event details on the Ignite blog (the source of all of great quotes above).

Many thanks to the powerhouse of creative minds at P'unk Avenue and The Hacktory for bringing this event to our fair city.

IgnitePhilly
June 11, 2008, 6pm
Johnny Brenda's. 1201 N. Frankford Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19125

if you're feeling sinister...

I should first mention, as I have already several times on Twitter, that this Belle & Sebastian radio station I made on Pandora is absolutely, categorically one of the most amazing stations ever! For all you Belle & Sebastian fans out there, I have even better news! This Saturday, May 10th, National Mechanics and Philebrity are hosting the 4th Annual Belle & Sebastian Dance Party. If you're looking to see other people, sleep the clock around, or wait for the moon to rise... this is the place to be! If you can't make it to this, well then you're just a baby!

Since you'll be in the neighborhood, it might also be a good time to head over to Independents Hall for the Battlestar Galactica Party, brought to you by Geekadelphia, The Hacktory and of course Indy Hall. I hear there will be Cyclon raider cookies and Battlestar shaped cake brought to you by the sweetest girl in town, Whipped Bakeshop. RSVP on Facebook.

fork you live: this saturday! dips and dippers!

Come on out to Foster's Homeware this Saturday at 2pm for a fun filled Fork You Live episode featuring the always effervescent Marisa and Scott. Bring your tastebuds for a delightful spread of dips and dippers and all kinds of tips and tricks to make 'em delicious. And Scott might say a funny thing or two!

Hope to see you there!

sxsw: here i (we) come!

The countdown is winding down to hours until I make my way down to Austin, Texas for my first ever SXSW Interactive conference. I have wanted to go for about 5 years running now, but it turns out this is the year.

I'm happy to attend with a huge crew representing Philly... a big chunk of Independents Hall and my good friends from P'unk Avenue. We're gonna rock out in Austin! For those of you I haven't met yet, I can't even wait!

Let the adventures begin...

passyunk square civic association house tour - this Saturday!

(photo courtesy of P'unk Ave)

The Passyunk Square Civic Association is having a house tour this weekend! The event takes places Saturday November 10th from noon to 5. (Don't worry, you can do the house tour and still check out Indy Hall movie night!)

Here is the event information:

A self-guided tour of homes throughout the Passyunk Square neighborhood, with free pizza (at Slice Pizza), coffee & desert (at Benna's), as well as an ‘End of Tour’ party at 1601 Wine Bar & Café.

All donations will go to the PSCA Trash Committee, to retain the services of manual street cleaners.

Want info? housetour[at]passyunk[dot]org

Tickets are a donation of $20 for 1 and $35 for 2. There are discounts for large groups. This is a great way to give back to the community and also check out houses in various states of construction and architectural design. Support Philadelphia neighborhoods... and remember, Passyunk Square is home to our good friends P'unk Avenue!

Please get in touch or comment if you are thinking of attending!

mmm...yeah... why don't you just go ahead and...

Free this Saturday night? Why don't you just go ahead and swing on down to Independents Hall for our first ever double header movie night, featuring the cult classics Office Space and Teen Wolf.

This event is sponsored in part by Philly Car Share, one of the best local businesses around. They've been doing these movie nights all summer long, so we're pretty psyched their helping us out with this one. If you have been thinking of signing up for Philly Car Share, this is a good chance to get more information, from them and from many existing members like myself! Come on down!

Doors open at 7pm for plenty of mingling and such before movie time at 8pm. Be sure to check out the full event detail page at Upcoming.org. Please RSVP there if you can!

Besides this being a great event for fun times, food & refreshments, it's also completely FREE! It's a can't miss. Hope to see you there!