Author: admin

Cruel 2 B Kind in Cal Anderson Park on 4/21

CruelGameLogo

Come to Cal Anderson Park on April 21st to play a game with 100s people. The game is Cruel 2 B Kind.The goal is to make the other players surrender to you. Your weapons are acts of kindness such as compliments. Your team grows with each surrender until there are mobs of people walking around complimenting each other. It’s a delightful game invented by Jane McGonigal and Ian Bogost. We are going to be the first to play it in Seattle.

You can sign up for Cruel 2 B Kind on the Cruel Game website. You can sign up in a team or by yourself. You should read the rules. In the days before the game the “weapons” will be announced via email and SMS. We will be playing the Booty Variant — everyone brings a piece of Booty and surrenders it when they succumb to another player. Rules will be posted around the park so that people can play even thought they didn’t formally sign-up.
The Seattle Cruel 2 B Kind sign-in will begin at 1:30PM on 4/21, the game will begin at 2PM and the game will end around 3PM. We’ll find a bar to go to or just plop down for a picnic. The playing field will have the following boundaries:

North – Denny
South – Pike
East – 12th
West – Broadway

Here’s how the inventors describe it:

At the beginning of the game, you and a partner-in-crime are assigned a secret weapon. To onlookers, it will seem like a random act of kindness. But to a select group of other players, the seemingly benevolent gesture is a deadly maneuver that will bring them to their knees.

Some players will be slain by a serenade. Others will be killed by a compliment. You and your partner might be taken down by an innocent group cheer.

You will be given no information about your targets. No name, no photo, nothing but the guarantee that they will remain within the outdoor game boundaries during the designated playing time. Anyone you encounter could be your target. The only way to find out is to attack them with your secret weapon.

Watch out: The hunter is also the hunted. At the beginning of the game, you and your partner will also be assigned your own secret weakness. Other pairs of players have been given your secret weakness as their secret weapon, and they’re coming to get you. Anything out of the ordinary you do to assassinate YOUR targets may reveal your own secret identity to the other players who want you dead.

As targets are successfully assassinated, the dead players join forces with their killers to continue stalking the surviving players. The teams grow bigger and bigger until two final mobs of benevolent assassins descend upon each other for a spectacular, climactic kill.

Will innocents be caught in the cross-fire? Oh, yes. But when your secret weapon is a random act of kindness, it’s only cruel to be kind to other players…

I hope that you decide to come out to play. BTW, the game is being organized by Brady Forrest and Serena Batten, but as you can tell from the description the game doesn’t really need any organization. See you at Cal Anderson

Ignite 3: Ask Later Schedule

Here is the schedule for the Ask Later talks. The First Round begins at 8:30; the second one begins at 9:45. We’ll be at the CHAC.
First Round

  1. Bruce Leban (Google, National Puzzlers’ League) – What I Learned in Prison

    2. Yes, I spent time in not one but two Massachusetts prisons and it was an educational experience in many ways. Find out why I went to prison and if I would do it again. Learn about the differences between “minimum” and “medium” security and how this applies to computer security. Learn what “good time,” “man trap” and “code 100” mean, why khaki pants were the required dress code, and other equally practical information. Don’t ask about the dogs.

  2. Alex Hopmann (Launch21 LLC, FastCarrot LLC) – Maximizing performance in aircraft engines

    3. Aircraft engines are basically the same as they were 60 years ago but pilots have recently rediscovered how to squeeze extra performance with advanced engine monitors and adjusting air/oxygen mixture. A five-minute talk on how engines actually work, how they compare to car engines and how knowing what’s actually happening can squeeze extra efficiency out of this system, with a bias towards non-pilots who care about knowing the details of how everything in the world works.

  3. Jordan Schwartz (Hive-Mind Backyard Beekeeping) – Beekeeping and the Hive Mind

    4. Beekeeping can be a simple, sweet and rewarding hobby. Learn how to set up a hive in your backyard, free yourself from the iron grip of International Honey Cartel and get a glimpse into the amazing social structure of these clever insects. Bonus: Hear early reports on Colony Collapse Disorder and impending demise of civilization as we know it!

  4. Karen Anderson (Writer Way, Biznik) – Workplace Survival Tips

    5. I’m a graying geek with many years of tech workplace experience, most recently six years at Apple’s .Mac Internet Services and the iTunes Music Store. Workplace Survival Tips is quirky look at what’s over-rated, what’s under-rated and what’s absolutely essential in the workplace environment. Slides will cover the topics listed below. My presentation experience includes commentary for KUOW-FM. For a sense of my communication style, take a look at my blog, Writer Way. Teamwork Money Apologies Office Friendships Office Romances The “In” Crowd Indignation Martinis, Mojitos and Single Malts Making the Rounds Training Evil People Phone, SMS and Email Skills Humor Sweat Management Books The Impact of Visuals “Being Yourself”

  5. Brian McConnell (Worldwide Lexicon, Radio Handi) – Worldwide Lexicon – Participatory Translation For The Web

    6. The Worldwide Lexicon enables website and blog authors to translate their sites through a combination of automated and human translation. The service, which is in internal testing, and will go to public beta shortly, works as follows: It monitors a site’s RSS feed for new works If possible, it obtains a rough machine translation to several target languages It creates a wiki page for each translation in progress The publisher directs readers to the wikis to participate in refining translations or starting translations to additional languages.

  6. Candace McNaughton, ND (Crescent Natural Health, ) – Health Hacks

    7. Natural medicine quick fixes. Eight simple solves for common issues. Candace McNaughton is a naturopath who specializes in diabetes and practices in Capitol Hill.

  7. Carl Coryell-Martin(Cassettes2Cds) – Tamasheq Technology: Living La Vie Nomad

    8. What kinds of technology do you find 4 days of driving from the nearest paved road? In the winter of 2005, I spent a month living and traveling with members of an extended Tamasheq family in the deserts of central Mali, West Africa. This will be a quick tour of the tools and systems from sat phones to forges to food preservation practiced by one tribe of modern African nomads. 

  8. Scott Berkun – Attention and Sex

    9. What things in your life demand undivided attention? Whatever they are, I claim they define your life more than anything else you do. Your obituary will not list the hours you fought off boring meetings or ignored your friends by reading forgettable blurbs about forgettable things on your cell phone. This talk explores how the wise and happy throughout history have avoided situations that divided their attention.

Second Round

  1. Keith Schorsch (PeerWisdom, ex-Amazon) – Making Sweet Lemonade

    2. How do find the idea that you are passionate about? How do you integrate your life and work experiences, both good and bad? I’ll share how my experiences at Amazon, McCaw, and with some personal health issues inspired the idea for our new venture, PeerWisdom, a social network for health.

  2. Shelly Farnham (Waggle Labs, ) – Why Social Tagging Really Matters (to me): Semantic Overlays on Social Networks

    3. Social tagging has revolutioned how we organize and retrieve online resources in systems such as Delicio.us, Flickr, and BlueDot. Yet, they have been incorporated into social networking systems in only rudimentary forms. I will talk about the potential for social tags to provide a semantic overlay to social networks, and illustrate how we used them to develop a social map of Seattle Mind Camp, and are incorporating them into our Pathable project.

  3. Christopher Johnson (Phrasetrain, The Name Inspector) – The Science (and Art) of Naming

    4. Many of you have faced, or will face, the challenge of naming a company, a blog, a product, or a service. In this talk The Name Inspector will give uncensored voice to his inner geek and present a lightning intro to the science (and art) of names, drawing heavily on linguistics, cognitive science, and his own experience as a namer and name analyst. He’ll talk about the mechanics of speech sound production, the symbolic properties of sounds, the structure of syllables, the poetics of names, the morphological types of names, the way words and their meanings are stored and accessed in memory, the conceptual principles of metaphor and metonymy at the root of word associations, and–using some prominent examples–not only what but HOW names mean.

  4. Coe Roberts (Real Networks, ) – No-Frills Getting Things Done

    5. Getting Things Done is a powerful system that you can use to run your whole life. But what if you don’t want to run your whole life? What if you just want to make sure some things don’t fall through the cracks? Here’s an easy-to-implement, low-overhead suggestion.

  5. Thomas Schmitz (SEOcritique.com, ) – Become a Marketing Piranha

    6. Think about the piranha. You know, that monstrous tiny little fish. By itself its just small and ugly. It might nip at you, but you can easily get away. As a school, piranhas are fierce and can take down large prey. You wouldn’t want to be a caribou in a pack of hungry piranhas. If you set aside the horror movie connotation there is a lesson here. By working together the piranhas get the caribou and there is enough food for each fish. The piranhas are the sellers in your market or the members of your network. The caribou is the market, the buyers and the prospects. It’s a big Amazon river out there, but by working together it’s your school of fish that is enjoying the meal. I especially like this analogy because when you look at a school of feeding piranhas you will see that there is also competition within the pack. It’s not uncommon for individual fish to get pecked and cut-up a little. Still, there is enough caribou or market share for every fish to get a meal. Also related with concepts to be included, What Dr. Doolittle Can Teach About Marketing and Networking.  

  6. Chris Heuer (Social Media Club) – Different Strokes for Different Folks – It’s a multi-channel world out there and everyone chooses for themselves, despite how much you prefer being digital. Of all the channels for communication, the most important is interpersonal and face to face. When we can meet each other with civility, as humans, it is harder to hate and easier to collaborate.
  7. Mark Novak (Microsoft, University of Washington) – Security Guarantees

    8. The topic is “security guarantees” – a way for the uninitiated to dissect security of systems (including software systems) and demand more secure solutions. I will use my 5 minutes to illustrate the concept by breaking security of OpenID – twice! – using nothing but common sense and a little bit of common knowledge.

  8. Eric Nevala – IT at Marine Headquarters, Al Anbar Province, Iraq

    9. * As a local US Marine Reservist who recently completed a second tour of duty in Iraq, I maintained servers, software systems, databases, built web applications, and tested cutting edge technology in an unstable environment. * In my presentation are a series of photographs and antecdotes about some of the cool stuff that I worked on * The future of IT in the Marine Corps and the practical concept of mobile, virtualized server rooms with no downtime (And if I have time, some info about the centralized reconstruction management website application I developed for western Iraq)

Paper Airplanes Challenge

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This Thursday night, we’re going to be making paper airplanes! We’ll have paper, markers, and scotch tape for you to make your own paper airplane and decorate it with hot rod flames or butterfly wing designs. You’ll then have to throw it across the room through a hoola-hoop on stage. If your airplane makes it through, you’ll move on to the next round! No paperclips, stones, lead weights, or just crumpling a piece of paper up into a ball and throwing it through the hoop!

Paper airplane building starts officially at 6:30 with the throwing beginning at 7:30. Do you have some mad crazy awesome paper airplane folding skills or just like to make cool airplanes? Stick a piece of duck tape to your chest where you would normally put a name tag. That’s the secret sign that folks will be looking for when they need an expert to teach them how to make a sweet paper airplane! (Duck tape will be provided)

Bring safety glasses, you enter the paper airplane zone at your own risk. Safety glasses are the new black!

Do you know of any resources for awesome paper airplanes? Put links in the comments! I’ve got a paper airplane design that a red headed gal taught me how to make in the first grade. I’m going to reproduce this design and upload it to the Make: Flickr Pool later. If you’ve got a tried and true design, find a way to document it and upload it to the pool too!

After the paper airplane madness, Brady, who writes for the Radar blog has a ton of awesome speakers lined up for the ask later presentations!

As always, there will be a bar where you can buy drinks and there will be lots of chit chat and hanging out. It’s a great place to go up to someone and ask them, “What do you make?”

Seattle geeks, nerds, and makers unite at Seattle Ignite!

(Photo Credit: Global Hermit)

Ignite is Thursday; 4th Batch of Speakers

Here’s another batch of talks:

  1. Thomas Schmitz (SEOcritique.com, ) – Become a Marketing Piranha

    2. Think about the piranha. You know, that monstrous tiny little fish. By itself its just small and ugly. It might nip at you, but you can easily get away. As a school, piranhas are fierce and can take down large prey. You wouldn’t want to be a caribou in a pack of hungry piranhas. If you set aside the horror movie connotation there is a lesson here. By working together the piranhas get the caribou and there is enough food for each fish. The piranhas are the sellers in your market or the members of your network. The caribou is the market, the buyers and the prospects. It’s a big Amazon river out there, but by working together it’s your school of fish that is enjoying the meal. I especially like this analogy because when you look at a school of feeding piranhas you will see that there is also competition within the pack. It’s not uncommon for individual fish to get pecked and cut-up a little. Still, there is enough caribou or market share for every fish to get a meal. Also related with concepts to be included, What Dr. Doolittle Can Teach About Marketing and Networking.

  2. Brian McConnell (Worldwide Lexicon, Radio Handi) – Worldwide Lexicon – Participatory Translation For The Web

    3. The Worldwide Lexicon enables website and blog authors to translate their sites through a combination of automated and human translation. The service, which is in internal testing, and will go to public beta shortly, works as follows: It monitors a site’s RSS feed for new works If possible, it obtains a rough machine translation to several target languages It creates a wiki page for each translation in progress The publisher directs readers to the wikis to participate in refining translations or starting translations to additional languages. We may be ready to demo on the 28th (not sure, but would like to present at Ignite this time or next). I can be reached at brian@mcconnell.net or 4154250833.

  3. Karen Anderson (Writer Way, Biznik) – Workplace Survival Tips

    4. I’m a graying geek with many years of tech workplace experience, most recently six years at Apple’s .Mac Internet Services and the iTunes Music Store. Workplace Survival Tips is quirky look at what’s over-rated, what’s under-rated and what’s absolutely essential in the workplace environment. Slides will cover the topics listed below. My presentation experience includes commentary for KUOW-FM. For a sense of my communication style, take a look at my blog, Writer Way. Teamwork Money Apologies Office Friendships Office Romances The “In” Crowd Indignation Martinis, Mojitos and Single Malts Making the Rounds Training Evil People Phone, SMS and Email Skills Humor Sweat Management Books The Impact of Visuals “Being Yourself”

  4. Shelly Farnham (Waggle Labs, ) – Why Social Tagging Really Matters (to me): Semantic Overlays on Social Networks

    5. Social tagging has revolutioned how we organize and retrieve online resources in systems such as Delicio.us, Flickr, and BlueDot. Yet, they have been incorporated into social networking systems in only rudimentary forms. I will talk about the potential for social tags to provide a semantic overlay to social networks, and illustrate how we used them to develop a social map of Seattle Mind Camp, and are incorporating them into our Pathable project.

  5. Coe Roberts (Real Networks, ) – No-Frills Getting Things Done

    6. Getting Things Done is a powerful system that you can use to run your whole life. But what if you don’t want to run your whole life? What if you just want to make sure some things don’t fall through the cracks? Here’s an easy-to-implement, low-overhead suggestion.

  6. Eric Nevala (, ) – IT at Marine Headquarters, Al Anbar Province, Iraq

    7. * As a local US Marine Reservist who recently completed a second tour of duty in Iraq, I maintained servers, software systems, databases, built web applications, and tested cutting edge technology in an unstable environment. * In my presentation are a series of photographs and antecdotes about some of the cool stuff that I worked on * The future of IT in the Marine Corps and the practical concept of mobile, virtualized server rooms with no downtime (And if I have time, some info about the centralized reconstruction management website application I developed for western Iraq) -Eric

  7. Carl Coryell-Martin (Cassettes2Cds, ) – Tamasheq Technology: Living La Vie Nomad

    8. What kinds of technology do you find 4 days of driving from the nearest paved road? In the winter of 2005, I spent a month living and traveling with members of an extended Tamasheq family in the deserts of central Mali, West Africa. This will be a quick tour of the tools and systems from sat phones to forges to food preservation practiced by one tribe of modern African nomads. (I’m sorry I missed the submission deadline, for some reason I didn’t see the email announcement that you were open to proposals. This is one of two talks I’m interested in giving. The linked photo gallery is on my sister’s website but is almost exclusively my work.)

  8. Scott Berkun (, ) – Attention and Sex

    9. What things in your life demand undivided attention? Whatever they are, I claim they define your life more than anything else you do. Your obituary will not list the hours you fought off boring meetings or ignored your friends by reading forgettable blurbs about forgettable things on your cell phone. This talk explores how the wise and happy throughout history have avoided situations that divided their attention.

As you can see we’ve got a bunch of great talks lined up for you. The final schedule will be up tomorrow. Note that the Marketing talk on gender and the talk on Epidemiology have both been canceled; we hope the speakers will be able to speak at the next Ignite.

Ignite Seattle is a geek event that combines on-site geekery, sharing, and innovation (and drinking). The THIRD one will be held upstairs at the CHAC on Thursday, April 5th. The Make Contest will begin at 6:30; the Ask Later talks will begin at 8:30. Videos and photos from the previous Ignite are available. Admission is free.

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Third Batch of Ignite Talks

More talk, more talks, more talks!

  1. Mark Novak (Microsoft University of Washington) – Security Guarantees

    2. The topic is “security guarantees” – a way for the uninitiated to dissect security of systems (including software systems) and demand more secure solutions. I will use my 5 minutes to illustrate the concept by breaking security of OpenID – twice! – using nothing but common sense and a little bit of common knowledge.

  2. Maegan Ashworth (University of Washington Dept of Epidemiology Seattle Biomedical Research Institute) – No, Not Skin: An Introduction to Epidemiology

    3. An introduction to the basic study designs, modeling approaches and technologies used in epidemiology, illustrated with infectious and noninfectious diseases of interest.

  3. Keith Schorsch (PeerWisdom ex-Amazon) – Making Sweet Lemonade

    4. How do find the idea that you are passionate about? How do you integrate your life and work experiences, both good and bad? I’ll share how my experiences at Amazon, McCaw, and with some personal health issues inspired the idea for our new venture, PeerWisdom, a social network for health.

Health was a big theme this time. It’s something I am researching for O’Reilly and then I received three health submissions. Good stuff.

Ignite Seattle is a geek event that combines on-site geekery, sharing, and innovation (and drinking). The THIRD one will be held upstairs at the CHAC on Thursday, April 5th. The Make Contest will begin at 6:30; the Ask Later talks will begin at 8:30. Videos and photos from the previous Ignite are available. Admission is free.

The Next Batch of Ignite Speakers

You’ve created your new killer app or your new business. How are you going to connect to your audience? The following talks may be a bit of a help.

  1. Heather Flanagan (PeopleGeekTV GearLive.com) – How Video Blogging Creates Cultural Innovation

    2. This should be a highly entertaining presentation about the potential of vlogging to create greater collective compassion and empathy as well as providing a laboratory for cultural innovations and experimentation. With a blog or vlog one has the ability to create and collaborate on a micro-culture with new paradigms and agreements. This can pave the way for positive changes in the macro-culture. This presentation should open bloggers and vloggers eyes about the power they have to innovate socially and be a little less Jerry Springery in their blogs. Even the mighty Robert Scoble can benefit from this discusion.

  2. Christopher Johnson (Phrasetrain The Name Inspector) – The Science (and Art) of Naming

    3. Many of you have faced, or will face, the challenge of naming a company, a blog, a product, or a service. In this talk The Name Inspector will give uncensored voice to his inner geek and present a lightning intro to the science (and art) of names, drawing heavily on linguistics, cognitive science, and his own experience as a namer and name analyst. He’ll talk about the mechanics of speech sound production, the symbolic properties of sounds, the structure of syllables, the poetics of names, the morphological types of names, the way words and their meanings are stored and accessed in memory, the conceptual principles of metaphor and metonymy at the root of word associations, and–using some prominent examples–not only what but HOW names mean.

  3. Chuck Pettis (BrandSolutions, Inc. Earth Sanctuary) – Differences Between Men & Women in Personal Life & Advertising

    4. Men and women aren’t just from Mars and Venus. We are from different galaxies! Learn about some of the key male-female differences based on recent brain research that can help you improve your personal relationships with the opposite sex and improve the effecitivness of your marketing and advertising.

The impact of video on the culture you live and work in, the sway of names, and power of gender – they all have my interest piqued.

Ignite Seattle is a geek event that combines on-site geekery, sharing, and innovation (and drinking). The THIRD one will be held upstairs at the CHAC on Thursday, April 5th. The Make Contest will begin at 6:30; the Ask Later talks will begin at 8:30. Videos and photos from the previous Ignite are available. Admission is free.

Speakers for the Upcoming Ignite

Ignite is next week! There’s going to be a great line-up this time. I am going to start revealing the speakers over the next couple of days. Here is the first batch.

  1. Alex Hopmann (Launch21 LLC FastCarrot LLC) – Maximizing performance in aircraft engines

    2. Aircraft engines are basically the same as they were 60 years ago but pilots have recently rediscovered how to squeeze extra performance with advanced engine monitors and adjusting air/oxygen mixture. A five-minute talk on how engines actually work, how they compare to car engines and how knowing what’s actually happening can squeeze extra efficiency out of this system, with a bias towards non-pilots who care about knowing the details of how everything in the world works.

  2. Candace McNaughton, ND (Crescent Natural Health ) – Health Hacks

    3. Natural medicine quick fixes. Eight simple solves for common issues. Candace McNaughton is a naturopath who specializes in diabetes and practices in Capitol Hill.

  3. Bruce Leban (Google National Puzzlers’ League) – What I Learned in Prison

    4. Yes, I spent time in not one but two Massachusetts prisons and it was an educational experience in many ways. Find out why I went to prison and if I would do it again. Learn about the differences between “minimum” and “medium” security and how this applies to computer security. Learn what “good time,” “man trap” and “code 100” mean, why khaki pants were the required dress code, and other equally practical information. Don’t ask about the dogs.

As you can see it’s going to be eclectic night of life hacks, geekery and war stories.
Ignite Seattle is a geek event that combines on-site geekery, sharing, and innovation (and drinking). The THIRD one will be held upstairs at the CHAC on Thursday, April 5th. The Make Contest will begin at 6:30; the Ask Later talks will begin at 8:30. Videos and photos from the previous Ignite are available. Admission is free.

Call for Speakers at Ignite III (4/5)

Ignite Seattle

The most inventive egg-protector at Ignite; Photo by Bre

The third Ignite Seattle is around the corner and it is time for you to submit your Ask Later proposal to the next Ignite Seattle! What do you want to tell Seattle in 5 minutes? You get 20 slides for 15 seconds a slide and you can’t control it. If you’re unsure of how it works watch a couple of videos from last time. To submit a talk please fill out all of the fields in our spartan, but highly functional submission form. Submissions will be open until Wednesday, March 28th. We have room for 14 speakers. I expect there will be more than that proposed. Slides will be due by Monday April 2nd. We are changing the format slightly for this round. There will be two blocks of 7 talk each with a longer break in between. The first block will begin at 8:30 and end by 9:15. The second block will begin at 9:45 and end by 10:30. We wanted to give people more opportunity to socialize with each other. We will also be using the room much more effectively so there will be more seats and floorspace. Another change is that we are going to experiment with themes (one for each set).

How will selections be made?

They will be based on content (will it appeal to geeks? is it about a life hack, entrepreneurship, tech ) and what else is in the program. One tip: we found that the best, most popular talks were not straight product demos, but instead focused on personal experiences that could easily be applied to other people’s own project and lives. The suggested themes will help you come up with that sort of talk; don’t pitch your product share something you learned while making it.

You are not restricted to the themes. Talks of all sorts will be accepted, but if you are looking for the proper way to frame your talk, think about one of them.

There will be no repeat speakers from the previous Ignite.

Looking for inspiration?  Watch the videos from last time. Thanks and please submit a talk! Ignite Seattle is a geek event that combines on-site geekery, sharing, and innovation (and drinking). The next one will be held upstairs at the CHAC on Thursday, April 5th. The Make Event will begin at 6:30; the Ask Later talks will begin at 8:30. Videos and photos from the previous Ignite are available. Admission is free.

We were lucky to have them

We were lucky to have Hillel Cooperman (pictured) of Jackson Fish Market join us at Ignite Deux. He agreed to join the lineup the night before the event (thanks Hillel!) and gave an amazing presentation entitled “Life is Short: How to Make Every Meal an Opportunity for a Memorable Experience”. Hillel’s talk was based on his food blog Tasting Menu, one of the top food blogs in Seattle. A video of his talk and his slides will be available soon (at the same time as everyone else’s).

Here is a second update on the speaker list for Ignite Deux. Marc Hedlund of Wesabe and Radar was originally scheduled to speak at Ignite. He was not able to make it. He told me this well in advance and I just never made an announcement on the blog (sorry!). We hope that he will be able to make it to a future Ignite. (someone asked about this in the comments and I realized that I hadn’t made this announcement — sorry for the bait-n-switch.)
Update: I have removed this photo of Hillel Cooperman. I hadn’t checked the rights on the photo before posting (sloppy of me) and the photographer has asked that I remove it (well within his rights!) as he has them marked for non-commercial use only all-rights reserved. Sorry Michal!