How and Why to Give an Ignite Talk – Scott Berkun

Editor’s Note – this post is completely ripped off of Brady’s post on the Ignite main site.

Scott Berkun is a great public speaker. He travels the country speaking on project management, innovation, design and lately on how to speak. As an offshoot in his research on his upcoming book he put together this Ignite talk on Why and How to Speak.

He’s summarized the talk in this excellent blog post on Speaker Confessions (where he’s chronicling his new book):

  • 300 seconds kicks ass. This is super short, which means it’s easy to practice . There is no excuse for not practicing until it feels good. It also means you have to be tight in your points. 300 seconds equals 10 television commercials. You can make great points in a short time if you refine your thoughts. The entire sermon on the mount can be read in about 5 minutes and The Gettysburg address takes about 2 and a half minutes.
  • Figure out your points before you make slides. Talking about something for five minutes is easy – really, give it a shot once or twice before you make a slide – it will help you sort out what you want to say. You only need Four or five solid points to go 5 minutes. And practice with a timer before you make a slide. You’ll quickly discover how unlikely it is to run out of things to say during an ignite talk.

  • It is ok to breathe. There is no law that says you must fill every second with talking. When you practice, practice breathing. Take a moment between points. Like whitespace in visual design it’s the pauses that make what you do say stand out clearly. Give yourself a slide or two that’s for just for catching up and taking a breath.

  • Pick strong stories and big themes. What do you love? What do you hate? What is the best advice anyone ever gave you? Pick stories with big themes, since they require less introduction. What are the 5 most important things to know about X that no one talks about? The stronger the topic & title the easier the work is. Top 10 lists can work, but making 10 points is extremely hard – aim for 5 or 6.

He’s got several more points at his site.

How to Break Up With Someone On Twitter – Jason Preston

Expressing one’s self on Twitter involves summarizing, editing, and jettisoning the unimportant. We need to strip our thoughts down to the bare minimum, while most importantly, retaining the meaning.

For the more verbose of us, Twitter’s 140 character limit poses a challenge for conveying something as simple as where you are and what you are doing. But what about communicating something much more complex, like breaking up with someone?

Jason Preston navigates you through the world of minimizing the complex feelings, thoughts and action items associated with breaking up with someone in less than 140 characters.

In this instructive how-to video, you’ll build your Twitter toolbox with the following editing tactics:

  • Acronymisying
  • Pictifying
  • Thesaurizing
  • Clppng

and if necessary, you can gain the ability to break up with someone on Twitter.

About Jason Preston

Jason PrestonJason Preston is currently the Director of New Media at Parnassus Group, the company responsible for the 140 | The Twitter Conference.

You can find Jason at Jasonp107 on Twitter, on his blog or his thoughts about the future of publishing at Eat, Sleep, Publish. Jason was recently interviewed by Scott Berkun about this talk here.

Community Genius: Leveraging Community to Increase your Creative Powers – Shelly Farnham

Are you in a creative rut? Finding yourself not as inspired as you’d like to be? Most of us in creative fields need to recharge our resourcefulness every now and then.

Shelly Farhham, social scientist and leading expert in community technologies, has spent her professional life researching social media and building online communities.

In her talk, Shelly shares 13 tips to increase your creative powers ranging from (1) Seek Diversity to (8) give away ideas freely to (7) hang around in bars and helps you figure out how leverage community to increase your creative powers.

About Shelly Farnham

Shelly D. Farnham has a PhD in Social Psychology from University of Washington and is the co-founder and social architect at Waggle Labs, which develops innovative social applications. You can find her on Twitter at shellyshelly.

You can see Shelly’s slides on Slideshare and read the text on the Waggle Labs’ blog.

Hillel Cooperman and the Secret Underground World of Lego

Kids give you license to be kids again. For Hillel Cooperman and his wife, this gave them license to go to Lego conventions, bid on Lego auctions and even turn rooms of their house into Lego rooms.


Note: this Ignite Seattle talk may contain language that is not safe for work (but then you probably shouldn’t be goofing off either).

About Hillel Cooperman

You can find Hillel hanging around the Jackson Fish Market or putting on the “Small and Special” conference, a “tiny conference for small business owners and entrepreneur hopefuls.” You can follow Hillel’s personal exploits on Twitter and his blog or learn more about his obsession with Lego.

Ignite 7 Submissions Are Open

Ignite Seattle 7 is happening on August 3rd and talk submissions are open. If you have a 5 minute talk that will inspire, teach or just make people think then throw your hat in the ring. We’ll take ~16 speakers (and no repeats from last time). Get your talk in by July 1st.

Submit your talk here.

We’ve already got two great speakers lined up. First, I’m happy to welcome back Rob “How To Buy A Car” Gruhl with a talk on How To Take Photographs (check out his photos on Flickr ).  Second, we’ve lined up Matthew Amster-Burton, local food writer and author of Hungry Monkey (AKA How to raise a foodie).

We had over 500 people in attendance at the last Ignite event in April, with great talks by:

If you need inspiration about “How and Why to Give an Ignite Talk,” Scott Berkun can help you out.

Ignite will be held once again at the King Cat Theater (map). We look forward to seeing you there!

Stay in the Know on Ignite Announcements

There are many ways to stay up-to-date on the newly revived Ignite Seattle.

Ignite Mailing List – We have an announcement list for keeping you uptodate. We only send out 1-2 mails per month. The content is limited to Ignite news and other similar events from the Ignite community. You can sign up here. Only Ignite organizers can send mail to this list.
IgniteSea on Twitter – If 140 character sound bites are more your speed, follow us @ignitesea.
Ignite Seattle Blog – You’re reading this post on the blog. You can also subscribe via RSS.
Local Seattle Blogs – Seattlest, Seattle 2.0, The Big Blog and Techflash all let their readers know that Ignite was happening.
Ignite Site – Ignites are happening around the world every week. You can keep track of all of them (including Seattle) on the central Ignite site.

See you soon!

Ignite Seattle 6 Schedule

Ignite Seattle is this Wednesday, 4/29, at the King Cat Theatre. Ignite is free. We’ve got a great line-up of speakers. Here’s the evening’s schedule:

7PM – Doors Open

7:30 PM – Paper Tower Contest Begins – Build the tallest tower you can out of just 5 sheets of paper and tape (See Details)

8:30 – First Set of Talks
Hillel Cooperman (@hillel) – The Secret Underground World of Lego
Dawn Rutherford (@dawnoftheread) – Public Library Hacking
Roy Leban (@royleban) – Worst Case User Experience: Alzheimer’s
Shelly Farnham (@ShellyShelly) Community Genius: Leveraging Community to Increase your Creative Powers
Dominic Muren (@dmuren) – Humblefacturing a Sustainable Electronic Future
Jen Zug (@jenzug) – The Sanity Hacks of a Stay At Home Mom
Ken Beegle (@kbeegle) – Decoding Sticks and Waves
Maya Bisineer (@thinkmaya) – Geek Girl – A life Story
Scott Berkun (Scottberkun.com)- How and Why to Give an Ignite Talk

9:45 PM – Second Set of Talks
Scotto Moore (Scotto.org)- Intangible Method
Secret Guest Speaker from Ignite Portland
Mike Tykka – The Invention of the Wheel
Jason Preston (@Jasonp107) – Goodbye Tolstoy: How to say anything in 140 characters or less
Chris DiBona (@cdibona) – The Coolness of Telemedicine
Ron Burk – The Psychology of Incompetence
Katherine Hernandez (@ipodtouchgirl) – The Mac Spy
Jamie Gower JamieGower.com) – I Am %0.0002 Cyborg
Beth Goza (@bethgo) – Knitting in Code

Pre-Ignite Contest

Back when Ignite first lit up the Seattle scene, Bre Pettis used to run a pre-ignite contest just to get things warmed up. We are bringing back that tradition for the next Ignite, and everyone is invited to participate.

The game is simple, the rules are few, and it will be a contest of pure creativity and engineering prowess.  Your materials are 5 sheets of paper, a roll of tape, and a pair of scissors. Gather your team and start cutting, folding, rolling and taping until you have the tallest freestanding tower you can manage. When time is called, step away and cross your fingers!

There are only two rules:

  1. you can’t use anything other then the paper and tape provided
  2. your construction cannot be taped to the floor (or any other part of the theater for that matter)

Whichever team has the tallest structure standing when the Judges come around wins, and there will be prizes.

We will provide the tape and paper, just bring some friends and a pair of scissors (no running please). Contest will begin at 7:30  so you will have time to finish and clean up before the talks get started at 8:30.