Penguinspeak

I first read about Ignite Portland last year right after IP6 (Ignite Portland 6). I knew I had missed something cool, so I kept an eye peeled for the announcement of IP7. It finally happened last night.

I wasn’t sure going into it what to expect. The website describes the creators as “geeks”, there are techy sponsors, and if you dig a little further you’ll find an Ignite Community site that is sponsored by O’Reilly.

But the topics of the talks are generally non-geeky, as you can see here in the list of last nights presentations:

* Rick Huddle – Why we love DB Cooper
* Mike McClure – Roasting Coffee at Home: It’s easier than you think!
* Clifton B – Why Highway Communication Sucks and How We Can Make It Suck Less
* Michael Weinberg – Thanksgiving 2.0
* Jason Duerr – Pump Up Your Volume: Building a Pirate Radio Station
* Crystal Beasley – Ecstatics, Zealots & Mass Hysteria : How we collectively lose our minds
* Douglas Wolk – Kant’s “Critique of Aesthetic Judgement”: Drastically Condensed Awesome Version
* Adam DuVander – The Donkey Man is not on Facebook
* Colleen Wainwright – My bloody epiphany
* Phil Earnhardt – Robots Growing Up: The Future of Robotic Movement
* Marcus Miller – How to cultivate a wisdom of craft.
* Lou Alvis – Human Systems Analysis. What Are People Doing?
* Curtis C. Chen – How to Solve Any Puzzle in Less Than 47 Minutes
* Kelly Jo Horton – Confessions of a Dating Ninja
* Brett Stern – Rural mailboxes
* Elena Moon – How to Capture and Eat Your First Roadkill Deer
* Ward Cunningham – Becoming Bike Oriented
* Randal Schwartz – Karaoke for fun and profit
* Christian Howes – Inappropriate terms to use in an American business meeting if you are a brit!
* Kent Bye – The Resurgence of Hula Hooping

I showed up early, grabbed myself some pizza and a beer, and took a seat. A lot of laptops were open and a lot of iPhones were glowing. I decided to watch the tweets for #ip7 and they started flowing in at a steady rate. It kept me entertained until the start of the show. I’ve actually never been at an event like that and watched the tweets come flowing in live as it was all happening — knowing that they were all originating from those right around me. I knew that @skinny was ‘absofrakkinterrified’ about giving her talk (she kicked ass by the way). I also knew that another one of the presenters, @dropkickdesign was wanting “Less talky talky more beer poury poury” in the beer line.

Then it started. There was no intro, no MC, just a clock that started counting down. Rick Huddle took the stage. From then on it was back to back 5 minute presentations, with about 10 seconds in between. It was fast paced. The topics were of all sorts. The crowd was relaxed and fun, and the speakers were all great.

I won’t go into detail on all the topics here. Some were plain funny, some were downright moving, and others were simply educational.

You can watch the stream here.

Thanks to everyone who put Ignite Portland together, and all the volunteers. It was an awesome time!