Photos from the Ignite Seattle Group Pool on Flickr. If you took pictures at Ignite Seattle 8, please add them to the pool with the tag “is8” and they’ll show up here.
Additionally, you can view pictures from all the previous Ignite Events on our Photos page.
We’re doing a special recession-themed icebreaker tonight, inspired by the Ten Thousand Cents art project. We’ll be handing out sheets of paper with a dollar bill on them (front or back), broken in to a 4×8 grid. Each team of 2 to 3 people will be responsible for re-creating one of the 64 grids. We’ll be providing paper and some drawing materials, but you’re encouraged to bring your own stuff, if you can.
Once the 30 minutes are up, we’ll collect all of the grids, and divide everyone up into two teams, one for each side of the bills. You’ll have 30 seconds to assemble all the grids and tape them to the wall. We’ll leave the drawings up for the rest of the evening so everyone can admire the art work.
We’re starting promptly at 7:30, so make sure you and your team are there on team, and ready to draw! Looking forward to seeing everyone tonight!
Ignite Seattle 8 is tonight! As always we have a cornucopia of speakers talking about a variety of geek topics. The doors to the King Cat Theatre open at 7:00. The talks start at 8:30 PM. It makes “cents” to bring your art hat for tonight’s warm-up that starts at 7:30pm.
Here’s the line up (in order of appearance):
Eugene Lin – iPhoning my way to retirement, $.70 at a time
I want to be rich. Steve Jobs promised it. App after app, the Apple gods got angry with me. Until finally, with nothing but an accelerometer, two dozen naked women, and the nation of Japan, I had a story to tell.
Arianna O’Dell (arianna) How to Sneak into Bars
I am a 19 year old student at the University of Washington. Most people don’t know this because they never ask. I’ve been attending networking events all summer and most people think I’m out of school and already graduated.
Benjamin Franklin – Intellect: without an outlet in the world
Do we remain in awe of Ben Franklin’s capacity and accomplishments or do we take on his mantle of “Doing the best with what we have” and look at our issues and do something about them? Better yet, WWBFD? [Brady’s note: This is going to be a presentation by someone done as Benjamin Franklin. You can learn more on his site.
Wendy Chisholm (wendyabc) Challenge your assumptions. Innovate. Change the world.
Most designers are taught to design for the average user and as a society we hold many assumptions about the characteristics of those users. However, products are used in unexpected ways and by unexpected audiences.
Jeremy Bingham (captain_tenille) An Astronomical Viewing Shelter on the Cheap
Using your telescope in the city can be frustrating with all the stray light all over the place. You can’t do much about the skyglow, but you can shield yourself from stray light sources nearby.
Jon Bell (jonbell) Usability Beyond the Classroom
It wasn’t until I spent a year at frog design as a developer that I realized everything I learned in art school was either wrong, outdated, or only told half the story.
Peter Wilson (peterwil) Google vs. Microsoft: An Insiders Guide
Google vs. Microsoft: where will the battles be fought, how will each companies strategies and blind-spots impact the outcomes, and who will win? The speaker spent 9 years at Microsoft and 4 at Google, and so thinks he knows something about this…
Scott Berkun (berkun) Everything you need to know about philosophy in 5 minutes
I’m the sad owner of a philosophy degree. I’m convinced i can give people a better education in philosophy (and make them realize how much they already know and love philosophy) in 5 minutes than I got in 4 years.
Mike Tyka – Cubes in the Sky
We went through about 10 designs each trying to achieve the same goal of somehow raising the 15x15x15ft Groovik’s Cube, weighing near 4000 lbs 10 feet in the air within a fairly tight budget.
Richard Bailey – More blink in less time? Manufacturing electronics for art projects.
The Groovik Cube required a custom surface mount circuit board for each of the 56 facets. Early estimates showed that this would require well over 150 hours of time to accomplish. The Groovik electronics team created an assembly line and produced 90 boards in one day.
Sarah Schacht (sarahschacht) Overcoming Cacophony: Making Gov 2.0 Work for You
What can you do, as an individual to make your voice heard in the lawmaking process and what tools do you use? Learn how to make your email float to the top of a pile of thousands, how to stand out from the crowd, and how to do so without losing your sanity.
Veronica Sopher (Shih_Wei) Jewelry: It’s What Geeks Know!
Elizabeth Taylor and Ivanka Trump may have their own jewelry lines, but it’s geeks like you/us who are the experts in jewelry. Yes, it takes a real geek to know jewelry, cut through the salesperson’s bs, and shop like a pro. Let me show you why.
Norman Guadagno (thinktone) Amazon Archaeology OR Swimming In Our Own Clickstream
Every time we buy from Amazon, we give their algorithms a little more information about ourselves (or at least the things we buy). But, do we have our own algorithms to help us make sense of purchase after purchase across time? What can we learn about ourselves through the things we buy?
Dylan Wilbanks (dylanw) Everyone Core Dumps: Death and Loss For The Geek
We are all going to die. But handling loss is something geeks struggle with. Learn three things you should do when a friend dies, three things you shouldn’t do, and ways you can preserve your existence online.
Greg Dunlap (heyrocker) How to not suck at pinball
Pinball is hard. Luckily, getting better at pinball, not great but respectable, is actually pretty easy.
Jason Carmel (defenestrate99) Defamation and Twitter – A Practical Guide to Covering Your Ass
I will provide a few practical ways that might protect your right as an American to roast the bejeezus out of the asshats of the world, without getting sued into oblivion.
Ron Burk (ronburk) Three Strange Definitions of Computer Programming Legendary computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra once said: “Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.” But if programming is not about the computers, what IS it about?
We’re excited about Ignite Seattle and we hope to see there. If you are tweeting about the event, use #is8 and if you are taking photos, please add them to our Flickr group and/or Facebook page.
Don’t call Lauren Bricker a teacher, she’s more of a “Geek Generator.” For the last two years she’s been teaching computer science at a local private high school. It’s incredibly interesting, rewarding, and yes, a lot of work.
Lauren talks about her experiences teaching CS to high school kids and tells us how we can help generate more geeks.
Lauren Bricker teaches AP Computer Science to high school students (10-12th grade) and has a software consultancy, Brickware. You can find her on on Twitter @brickware.
When looking at data regarding Web site user behavior or in Daniel Westreich’s case, epidemiology, we have to be remember that correlation does not imply causation. That is, just because two events were observed close together in time, it is false to assume that one caused the other. Causal inference is hard.
With great examples, Daniel Westreich presents counterfactuals, causation and correlation at a pragmatic, hands-on level.
Former Microsoft developer, Daniel Westreich is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Department of Epidemiology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he leads the Causal Inference Research Group.
Between working long hours, working on geek side projects (and at least in my case, raising kids), putting together a dinner party seems like a lot of work.
Coming from someone who spends more time on the road than in her house, search engine optimization expert, Vanessa Fox gives us her tips on throwing a successful, yet simple dinner party for foodies.
When Vanessa isn’t talking about food, you can find her working on SEO projects at Nine By Blue. You can find Vanessa Fox on her blog, on Twitter @vanessafox or hosting Office Hours on Webmaster Radio.
The experience of building a maker space from scratch is certainly a project, Willow Brugh talks about her experience in doing so, what advice others have shared with her, and what spaces like this (Hackerbot, Saturday House are already available in Seattle.
You can find Willow on her blog, on Twitter @willowbl00. You can find more information about Jigsaw Renaissance at http://www.jigsawrenaissance.org/, the hacker space mentioned in Willow’s talk.
Software and hardware developers spend a lot of time combing through the flaws and defects that their products have. But what about their own flaws and defects? Is it as simple as filing a bug?
Elan Lee had always wanted to be taller. Here’s his story of the attempts to fix his bug.
Game designer and storyteller, Elan Lee has made a career keeping people entertained. He is a founder of Fourth Wall Studios, where he currently serves as Chief Designer. When he’s not creating Alternate Reality Games, you can find him on Twitter at @elanlee
Elan gave the talk “Life – if you’re bored, you’re doing it wrong” at Ignite Seattle 4.
With her familiar charts, graphs, diagrams and deadpan humor, Jessica Hagy indexes Ignite Seattle.
A recent transplant from Columbus, Ohio, Jessica Hagy writes (and draws) the popular blog, Indexed. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the BBC Magazine and has won numerous awards. A collection of Indexed was published last year.
You can find Jessica on Twitter @jessicahagy.
Glued to email, your RSS reader or Twitter? Has your hand grown by 133 grams — the approximate weight of an iPhone? The Web is a stream, and it’s easy to drown. Mónica Guzmán returns to the Ignite stage to offer tips, tricks and cautionary tales to guide you through the perils of an always connected lifestyle.
Mónica Guzmán is a reporter for the Seattle PI‘s Big Blog You can find her on Twitter @moniguzman or organizing the next Big Blog meetup, which is this Wednesday, November 11th from 5:30 – 7 pm at Cupcake Royale in Ballard.
Mónica gave the “how to be a better news commenter” talk at Ignite Seattle 5 and Ignite Gnomedex.
Ignite Seattle 