We’ve got a great line up for our next event, held once again at the King Cat Theatre on December 1st at 7pm. Here is the list of speakers for Ignite Seattle 8 (in no particular order). We look forward to seeing you there.
Continue reading “Ignite Seattle 8 Speakers”
Category: Event
What Makes the Greenest Cab? – Gregory Heller
Green transportation is all the rage these days, especially hybrid and electric vehicles. Popular wisdom may lead some, including civic leaders and politicians to believe that the greenest vehicle is a hybrid. NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg has been fighting to “Green” the Yellow Cab fleet in that city by forcing all new cabs to be hybrids. The iconic New York City taxi cab often sets the pace for the rest of the country’s cabs.
Would hybrids in NYC really make green cabs? And would the rest of the country’s cab industries follow suit? The answer may surprise you.
About Gregory Heller
Gregory Heller is a partner at Civic Actions, an internet strategy and web development consultancy dedicated to empowering social change organizations.
You can find Gregory on his blog and on Twitter @gregoryheller. Gregory also writes about food on his @hungryseattle Twitter feed. You can find the slides to his presentation here.
60 Minutes in Whale (and How I Learned to Use a Machete!) – Mandy Sorensen
Ever wondered what to do with a half-alive beached whale on a remote island in the Pacific? Veterinarian Mandy Sorenson recounts her experience of dealing with this very problem while visiting the Pacific island of Rarotonga in 2006.
After a remarkable and significant attempt to keep a beached juvenile beak nosed whale alive, Mandy was left with the very dirty duty of performing a full scale necropsy (autopsy) while learning how to most effectively use a machete and a rock as her primary surgical tool.
NOTE: Some of the images in this video are fairly gruesome. If you’re squeamish, you might consider not watching.
If you didn’t watch the video, I’ll give you the moral: plastic bags have no place in the ocean.
About Mandy Sorenson
When she’s not performing whale autopsies, you can find Mandy Sorenson in her day job as a “surfing veterinarian” here in Seattle. Follow her on Twitter at mandercrosby.
How I Learned to Appreciate Dance Being Married to a Ballerina – Todd Sawicki
At past Ignites, we’ve learned that being married to a geek or startup jock can be rough and finding that geek girl can be tough but rarely, do we hear the geek’s side of the story.
Todd Sawicki takes us on a trip into his married life and shares what he has learned being married to a former professional ballerina. Most of us couldn’t tell the difference between a first and fifth position and a Plié vs. a Passé.
In this passionate talk, we learn that even a geek can learn to appreciate and love classical dance.
About Todd Sawicki
Todd Sawicki is a veteran of numerous tech startups, but lately, you can find him around Cheezburger HQ (purveyors of I Can Has Cheezburger and Fail Blog) as Chief Revenue Officer. When he’s not saying “OH HAI” to advertisers, you can find him on Twitter, on his blog or talking shop at Hops and Chops.
Confessions of an Ignite Speaker
Scott Berkun, an Ignite Seattle regular and fantastic public speaker has a new book coming out out on public speaking, “Confessions of a Public Speaker.” The book will be on bookshelves on November 6th, 2009 but in the mean time, here’s a PDF preview and a trailer he put together for it.
Full disclosure: I gifted a couple of images that appear in the book and O’Reilly, one of sponsors, is the publisher.
That said, I can’t imagine a more appropriate book to pimp for anyone considering speaking at a future event
Where Goldfish Come From – Lee LeFever
Everyone knows goldfish and koi, but very few have ever thought about where they come from – how they are bred, raised, transported, etc. Lee LeFever knows these things like the back of his hand.
Since 1965, the LeFever family in North Carolina has owned and operated one of the largest fish hatcheries in the US. Blue Ridge Fish Hatchery raises and sells tens of millions of goldfish and Koi a year.
About Lee LeFever
When Lee isn’t telling fish stories, he and his wife, Sachi run Common Craft, makers of the “In Plain English” series of videos. You can find Lee at his blog, on Twitter @leelefever or helping you plan to survive a zombie attack.
Geeking out aero-style for a hundred bucks – Dan Shapiro
When Dan Shapiro was a kid, radio control flight meant spending thousands of dollars to put what was essentially a slightly aerodynamicized lawnmower in the air. You spent thousands on engines and electronics and balsa, months building your plane, crashed it your first flight out, and then repeated.
Over and over, and over again.
Enter lithium polymer batteries, rare earth magnets, miniaturized solid state inverters, 2.4 GHz spread spectrum frequency hopping transmitters and receivers. Then stir it up in a huge domestic Chinese market for RC gear that has pushed remote control aircraft off a Moore’s law cliff of price and performance.
Watch Dan explain how you can get off the ground for a single Benjamin.
About Dan Shapiro
When Dan isn’t geeking out about RC planes, you can find him at his day job as CEO of Ontela, on his personal Web site, danshapiro.com, or on Twitter @danshapiro.
Ignite Seattle 8 Proposals Due on Monday!
Just a little reminder that Ignite Seattle talk proposals are due on Monday, October 19th. Our next Ignite Seattle will be December 1st at the King Cat Theatre.
We’d love to have YOU come speak at Ignite.
Scotto Moore’s Digital Fairy Tale, CPU
Ignite Seattle Artist-in-Residence, Scotto Moore’s gives us his latest work, “CPU” which he describes as “a cautionary tale about the dangers of modern neural malware.” Updating those virus definitions will never feel quite the same.
About Scotto Moore
Scotto Moore is a writer, director and technologist. You can find him at Scotto.org. His next play, “When I Come to My Senses, I’m Alive,” will be at the Annex Theatre April 23 – May 22, 2010.
Some praise for CPU:
- “tweeting grinds to a halt as the ignite digital fairy tale told by scotto moore holds people spellbound at #gnomedex”
- “Last Ignite speaker Scotto Moore offers a very entertaining Charlie Kaufman-esque talk. Great!”
- “Awesome last Ignite talk – human as virus-hobbled computer. Moving.”
- “Loving the last Ignite talk. Absolute best of the series IMO.”
Principles of Economics Translated – Yoram Bauman, Ph.D.
Yoram Bauman, a standup economist, deconstructs Greg Mankiw’s 10 Principles of Economics. In short order Yoram explains away tradeoffs, incentives, margins and markets. They become more common concepts of choices, people, governments, and stupidity (and limits of stupidity).
Greg Mankiw clearly doesn’t take this too personally, he blogged about Yoram twice, and by his own estimation, may have sold a few more books for him.
Editor’s Note: Much of this post was borrowed liberally from Brady’s post on the main Ignite web site.
About Yoram Bauman
Yoram has a Ph.D in Economics and has decided to use humor to convey his thinking. His first book The Cartoon Introduction to Economics: Volume One: Microeconomics comes out in January.
You can find Yoram Bauman on his blog, Stand-Up Economist, his blog at the Seattle PI or at his day job as the environmental economist for the University of Washington’s award-winning Program on the Environment.
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