The Next Ignite Challenge

In honor of Global Ignite Week, we’re trying something a little amibitious – mousetrap car races! For the Ignite Challenge, we will be pitting cars against each other to see who can get across the King Cat stage fastest.

Enter as a team or an individual. You are encouraged to build your car ahead of time – heck, you could even bring multiple cars. We’ll be holding two workshop nights at Metrix Create:Space in Capitol Hill – Sunday, January 16th and Sunday, January 30th. Some materials will be provided, but you can bring whatever you want, so long as the mousetrap is the sole source of power. For those that prefer to wait until the last minute, you will also have a chance to build a car at Ignite Seattle on February 10th.

So get cracking! There’s tons of resources on the web, including a fantastic instructables.com how-to. Thirty seconds of Googling should help you find some of the tips and tricks. Remember, we’re building for speed, not distance. Check back on this blog over the next month for updates.

Gregory Heller – SCRUM Project Management For Wedding Planning

Gregory Heller is a master of the SCRUM style of project management. When he was preparing to get married… he figured why go the normal route? Why not apply his knowledge for a different kind of project – his wedding!

Do you want to speak at Ignite? Submissions for talks are open until Friday, Jan 7th! Everyone has something interesting to say – what will you talk about?

Karen Cheng – How to Solve a Song

Karen’s pitch:

It’s happened to all of us – you hear a song that you don’t want to like. You try to resist, but you can’t. By the end of the song, you’re tapping your foot and singing along. Why are some songs so irresistibly catchy?

I used to think it was magic. But when I looked closer, I had an epiphany – It’s actually just math. Songs are catchy because they’re scientifically engineered to be that way. I’ll show you how.

About Karen Cheng

Karen Cheng - Ignite Seattle 12Karen is a Program Manager for Microsoft Excel and plays in a local Seattle rock band, Electric Villain. You can find her on the web at karenx.com and on Twitter at karenxcheng.

Submit Your Talk for Ignite Seattle 13

Our next Ignite Seattle will be February 10th, 2011 and it will be a part of the 2nd Annual Global Ignite Week. Last year, Global Ignite Week was held in 65 cities on 6 continents and featured over 500 speakers. Submissions are now open and we’d love to have you speak at our next Ignite. Submissions are due by January 10th, although earlier submissions are encouraged!

If you’d like to spread the word about open submissions through Social Media, you can use this bit.ly link: http://bit.ly/5XPH1

We’ve heard some people say they always want to come to the event, but they forget as the date approaches. If this sounds like you, take a second and sign up for our Ignite Seattle Newsletter, and we’ll make sure you don’t forget. 🙂

Ignite Seattle 12 is Tonight!

Tell your friends! Ignite Seattle 12 is tonight! 7pm at the King Cat Theater. It’s $5 at the door, and there’s a bar. Be sure to get there on time, as there’s a great team-based ice-breaker game planned before the talks.

In case you missed the speaker announcement, here are the speakers and their topics (in no particular order):

Scott Berkun (berkun) How to write well, instantly, ever time
There is talk of the death of writing, but writing is everywhere: in email, Facebook, text messages, we write now more than ever. It’s true much of it is bad, but we’ve mostly sucked at writing for as long as we’ve had words. Berkun, author of a popular blog and three bestselling books, will explain all you need to know about writing essays, books, blogs and everything else, in 5 short minutes.

Emily Chen (tenshiemi) Paring Life: Have Less, Live More
Last year I did an end of the year apartment purge of everything I considered junk. When I returned home from Value Village I was shocked by how much stuff I still had. I experienced a flash of inspiration and decided to commit myself to getting rid of something every day for a year. Every item is posted on my blog and free to any requester. I’m now over two hundred days in and I would like to share what I’ve learned along the way and strategies for optimizing your possessions for happier living.

Gregory Heller (gregoryheller) SCRUM Project Management For Wedding Planning
What happens when two people with project management experience decide not to hire a wedding planner and instead run their wedding planning through a modified SCRUM project management process? Certified SCRUM master, Gregory Heller will share his experience and lessons learned. Consider this a geek’s guide to planning the perfect wedding.

Mandy Sorensen (mandercrosby) Fleas, worms, and other nasty parasites: what they are, and why should you care?
Sure you’ve got a dog or cat at home. Are you sure you don’t also have a small population of nature’s most industrious little buggers hiding in your carpet or in your yard? Odds are, you do and you just don’t know about it. What you should know about the most common creepy crawlies out there.

Phil Thompson – Chemistry of the Cocktail
The chemistry and history of the cocktail, the flip.

Buster Benson (busterbenson) Virtual goods can improve the quality of your real life experiences
I’m building a social game, Health Month (healthmonth.com). As gamification has gained popularity, there has been a lot of discussion about whether or not points/badges/etc cheapen experience, lose value over time, or just simply ruin everything.

Alissa Mortenson (foolissa) Making Collaborative Art that Doesn’t Stuck

Adam Philipp (mypatents) How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Software Patents
Its seems there is nothing more reviled in geekdom than the software patent. It is lambasted from the left and the right from the ivory tower to the grass roots. It seems that it is singlehandedly to blame for the colossal failure of all progress in the field of computer science and stifles innovation and development of all the best products.

Beth Buelow (coachbethb) 5 Reasons Introverts Rock the Business World
The myth: Introverts are shy, socially backward and quite possibly all serial-killers-in-waiting.

The truth: Introverts are among the most famous, wealthy and successful people on the planet.

A five-minute look at what happens when introverts unleash their super-powers in the business world and beyond (and how to tell if YOU might be a member of Club Introvert).

Ellen Kowalczyk (elleliz) Got a minute?
Does your work / life balance look more like work / work / life balance? Feel like you’re constantly behind? Forget and lose track of the important things you meant to do? I’ll share a few ways to get back in control of your time and be more successful and more relaxed at the same time.

James Callan (scarequotes) Five big things grammar nazis get wrong about language
So sometimes you use “it’s” where you should’ve used “its.” Unfortunate? Yes. A sign that the sky is about to collapse all over our precious English language? Contrary to what a persnickety bunch of chicken littles would have you believe, no. Language is an art and a science, and grammar nazis need to be fiercely resisted as they browbeat us all with their ignorance of both.

Joel Grus (joelgrus) How to Be Funny
It’s easy to be popular if you’re rich, or good-looking, or good at sports. But the rest of us have to be funny if we want people to like us. Acclaimed writer, humorist, and data analyst Joel Grus has spent years of research and experimentation uncovering the basic principles of humor. In this 5-minute talk, he’ll teach you how to master these principles and make people laugh.

Karen Cheng (karenxcheng) How to Solve a Song
It’s happened to all of us – you hear a song that you don’t want to like. You try to resist, but you can’t. By the end of the song, you’re tapping your foot and singing along. Why are some songs so irresistibly catchy?

I used to think it was magic. But when I looked closer, I had an epiphany – It’s actually just math. Songs are catchy because they’re scientifically engineered to be that way. I’ll show you how.

Ignite Archives: Vj Vijai: Hacking the Technical Interview

Vj Vijai spoke in February 2008 about “Hacking the Technical Interview” using a mix of NLP, hypnosis, and jedi mind tricks – along with a good mix of humor and wise one-liners like “You don’t have to be the best, you just have to be better than the rest of the candidates.”

3 Days to Ignite Seattle 12!

Ignite Archives: Dave McClure: Startup Metrics for Pirates

Dave “Don’t Call Him Davey Jones” McClure was a speaker in August of 2007. He came to Ignite Seattle to talk about an his unusual collection of metrics for startups in a pirate-themed system he calls “ARRRR!”

4 Days to Ignite 12!

How to Register for the Ignite Newsletter

We’ve heard stories from people who want to come to an Ignite event, but miss out simply because they simply didn’t hear about it in time. With Ignite Seattle 12 less than a week away, this seems like the perfect time to sign up for the Ignite Seattle Email Newsletter! No need to miss an event just because you forgot to check the Ignite Seattle website, we’ll remind you!

In addition to reminding you about upcoming events, we’ll be sending out pictures, videos, and other extras in the days after the event!

So register now, and then swing by the King cat Theatre on December 7th at 7:00pm for Ignite Seattle 12!