Press releases

Ignite Seattle Is Back--O'Reilly Media Alert: Mouthing Off About Innovation

Press release: February 11, 2008

Ignite Seattle returns! The next Ignite Seattle is Feb. 19 at the CHAC (Capitol Hill Arts Center).

What is Ignite Seattle? It's a firestorm of on-site geekery and gabbing where a rapid-fire series of innovative talks is unleashed. The talks will each be 5 minutes long with 20 slides and only 15 seconds a slide. The doors open at 7 p.m. Ignite talks get started at 8 p.m. and continue for two rounds with frequent breaks. Admission is free.

"This is the fifth Ignite in Seattle. The tech community of Seattle has really taken to the event.” explains Seattle resident Brady Forrest, cofounder of Ignite and tech blogger for O'Reilly Media. "The talks give people a chance to share their passions; the format makes for a frenetic pace that keeps the audience engaged."

Here are some of the scheduled talks:

  • Noah Iliinsky, Generation of Complex Diagrams: How to Make Lasagna Instead of Spaghetti--A system for creating good diagrams, starting with perception and cognition, and ending by advising key choice points.
  • Ellen Kowalczyk, Living with (and not killing) the Entrepreneur in Your Life--Creative ways on managing money, time, personal space and the emotional ups and downs of living with a startup junkie.
  • Sarah Schacht, Run the Government: A Primer for Online Citizens--Web 2.0 has been around for a few years, US democracy-over 200. On/offline best practices & tools for citizen activism.
  • Adam Philipp, How to Roll Your Own Patent Application--Got an Idea? Is it new? Is it useful? Is it obvious? Yes, Yes, No! Patent it! Or at least get the provisional filed.
  • Vj Vijai, Hacking the Technical Interview--Use NLP, Hypnosis and other Jedi Mind tricks to land the exact job that you want
  • Jeff Barr, How to be a Technology Evangelist--Jeff will talk about the theory and practice of technology evangelism--what it is and how it is done.
  • Ramez Naam, Bottoms Up: Putting Employees, Information, and Customers In Charge of Business--What if businesses were market democracies? Would they be more effective? More conscientious?
  • Monica Guzman, How to be an Awesome News Story Commenter--A few tips on how you can use news story comment boards to improve local journalism and help reporters help you.

"At the last one we had over 350 people watch 15 great talks (all of which can be found online)," adds Brady. "Watch the videos on YouTube to see some excellent talks like Shawn Murphy's Hacking Chocolate, Elan Lee's LIFE: If you're bored, you're doing it wrong, and Dan Shapiro's Ten valuable lessons you shouldn't learn."

Ignite Seattle is organized by Brady Forrest and Jesse Robbins. To request an interview or for more information about Ignite Seattle, contact Brady Forrest at 206-355-1091 or brady@oreilly.com.

Please add this information to your Community Calendar:
Ignite Seattle, Feb. 19, 7pm
CHAC (Capitol Hill Arts Center)
1621 12th Ave
Seattle, WA 98122

To see more Ignite Seattle videos, visit http://ignitenight.blip.tv/#119360

For more information about Ignite events, see http://ignite.oreilly.com/

About Ignite Organizers
Brady Forrest chairs O'Reilly's Where 2.0 and Emerging Technology conferences. Additionally, he co-Chairs Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Berlin and NYC. Brady writes for O'Reilly Radar tracking changes in technology. He previously worked at Microsoft on Live Search (he came to Microsoft when it acquired MongoMusic). Brady lives in Seattle, where he builds cars for Burning Man and runs Ignite. You can track his web travels at Truffle Honey.

Jesse Robbins is an employee at Etelos and a member of the O'Reilly technical community as chair of the Velocity Conference. He has unique experience in both technology and emergency management. Previously he worked for Amazon.com where he was responsible for website availability. He is a volunteer firefighter & emergency medical technician, and led a task force after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

About O’Reilly

O’Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O’Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying “faint signals” from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.

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