Category: Ignite Seattle

Here’s another batch of talks:

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

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

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

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

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

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

* 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

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

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.

INSERT_MAP

More talk, more talks, more talks!

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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!