Ignite Seattle 11 is happening on September 14th 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 August 13th.

Submit your talk here.

If you need inspiration about “How and Why to Give an Ignite Talk,” Scott Berkun can help you out. We’ll have talks from the last Ignite Seattle posted here soon, say stay tuned.

Ignite Seattle 10 is next Monday! As part of our effort to get organized and make this the most awesome Ignite yet, here is a quick run down of some important details for attending.

• Ignite Seattle 10 will be on Monday June 14th. Doors will open at 7:00, icebreaker/game starts at 7:30, talks start at 8:30. The bar will be open the entire time.
• As usual, the event is at the King Cat Theatre, 2130 6th Avenue, Seattle, Washington 98121.
• 21 only. We know there are younger people who would like to attend, but the venue is just not set up for it.  We are looking at possibly doing an all ages Ignite, and we encourage you to let us know if you would like to help make that happen!
• Admission is $5 at the door. Cash only (small unmarked bill greatly appreciated). The folks at the door are volunteers, so please be patient with them if they don’t count so well. Yes, you can use your credit card at the bar.

That’s it for now, we hope to see you there for another great Ignite night.

Not sure if you’ve noticed, but we’re getting a bit more organized here at Ignite Seattle. So much so that we’ve identified a few things we could really use some help with for our next Ignite on Monday, June 14th.

If you’re a fit for one of the following, please fill out the “I’d like to help form below” and we’ll get in touch.

• Door Help
  We need one more volunteer to help collect money and stamp folks at the door. This is the second time we’ve charged $5 for the event and having more dedicated people to move things along will help a ton.
   
• Lighting Setup / Board Oversight
  Do you know anything about event lighting? Are you technical/mechanical person who likes to figure things out? Our needs are pretty simple but we need someone to meet with the venue, coordinate setup, and push a few buttons during the event.
   
• Spot Light
  Relatedly, we need a volunteer to run the spotlight during the event. Again, even if you’ve never run a spot before, if you are a technical/mechanical person who likes to figure things out, why not give it a go?
   
• Projector Shepherd
  We need someone to aim / focus the projector and then make sure it doesn’t come unplugged. Let me tell you that this is a very important role. Bad things happen when the projector goes down in a room of geeks.
   
• Runners
  We always need something at the last minute. Grabbing food for all the volunteers. Helping setup the Make mixer activity. Filling in for the volunteer who got stuck on the 520. Join us. It’ll be fun.

We received the most submissions we’ve ever gotten for an Ignite Seattle, and whittling it down to what you see here was very hard to do. That said, save the date, and hold on to your hats, this is going to be our biggest Ignite EVER!

We’re very happy to present the speaker list for the next Ignite Seattle on June 14th (listed in no particular order):

Beth Goza (@bethgo) Lifecrafting 101: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and “Go with the Flow”
Flow as defined by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning.” After some recent and incredibly upheavaling (not sure if that’s even a word) events in my life, I’ve discovered that “making and doing” are the keys to staying engaged and feeling fully alive.

Matt Harding (@WhereTheHIsMatt) The Imaginary Line of Ancient Cosmic Weirdness

Aimee Cardwell (violet) A tale of two taxis
A lot of us take taxis for business, but how do you find a taxi in a city you’ve never been in before? The Taxi Magic app is truly magic, all over the US (no, I don’t work for them, but it sure does work for me). But what happens when a taxi ride goes wrong? I’ve got the inside story on what happens when you call that “report a driver” number on the inside of every Seattle cab. Statements, hearings, and fines, oh my!

Mark Selander Commut-A-Pult
What if there was a better way to get to work in Seattle? A way to bypass all of the bridges, the freeways, the viaduct. Lightrail? Monorail? Carpooling? No, we’ve been there, it’s time for the future.

It’s time for Commut-A-Pult. Commut-A-Pult is a proposed aerial transport system that will literally launch passengers over the congestion and directly to their destination. Think of it as a Human Cannonball crossbred with a Smart car all with the cachet of Virgin Galactic.

Kim Prohaska (@kimprohaska) “Rocks” Your Mother Wouldn’t Approve Of: Ice Cube Applications for Cocktails
An iPhone without apps is much like a cocktail without ice, no substance, swirl or style. Having worked on consumer marketing side of the booze and restaurant world for nearly seven years, I’ve learned ice cubes have become an art form that geeks of all cocktail tastes can appreciate. Give me five minutes and you will never look at a cocktail the same way, ever again.

Andy Sack (@andysack) Why an incubator matters to the future of Seattle

Vanessa Fox (@vanessafox) Finding the Meaning of Life

Bradley Vickers (@nwrower) How to Row across the North Atlantic, Ration Food and Not Have Your Teammates Eat You
This adventure began with 4 friends from college on the shores of the Puget Sound and took us from New York to England over the course of 71 days in an Ocean Row Boat (29×6’). We rowed by pairs in 2 hour shifts all 24 hours of the day.

We had planned for each rower to have a daily consumption rate of between 7,000-8,500 calories. I miscalculated. My error put our lives in danger and seriously compromised our ability to complete the ocean row we had spent the past 18 months preparing for.

Marcelo Calbucci (@calbucci) The Sniff Test for Events & Conferences
How do you know a conference is worth attending? Or that networking event? How do you know Ignite Seattle is worth attending?

The number of events in tech, startups, entrepreneurship, geekdom and other areas are exploding and a lot of them simply suck. But some don’t. This talk is about using the “sniff test for events,” which is a theory I develop several years ago — before I started doing my own events.

Scott Bright (@scottbright) 5 Simple Rules for Fostering Commercial Innovation
Most people spend more time with their co-workers than their spouse, children, family and friends – so why does corporate culture mostly suck? Here are some observations for nurturing a sustainable spirit of innovation among an entrepreneurial elite, gleaned from over a decade of managing teams and developing breakthrough products for the worlds top brands.

Michelle Broderick (@michellebee) Level Up with Foraging
A beginner’s guide to finding wild edibles in the Northwest that gives you the hows and whys you should want to forage, where and what to forage and perhaps most importantly, how to not kill yourself.

Jeff Shuey (@jshuey) It’s only a little prick
The little prick I’m going to talk about is a needle. A needle and 5 minutes of your life can save 3 lives. During this talk a colleague will be doing a LIVE donation of blood.

In 5 minutes I will inspire the audience to think about giving a pint to save a life. In 5 minutes I will share why I started donating when I was 16 (hint: It was my father). In 5 minutes I will help everyone in the audience realize that they can give a pint and save a life. In 5 minutes I will help people realize how easy it is to give back.

Dan Shapiro (@danshapiro) Hacking birth
Like everything in life, having a baby has certain defaults. As a proud geek parent, you can do better. You’ll hear a technique to get the head of the department as your personal doctor, lighting tips for delivery room photography, and how to hack the special care unit to get a sick kid home faster. You’ll even learn how Dad can help mom with breastfeeding, no nipples required.

Noah Iliinsky (@noahi) How to buy a bicycle
About twice a month, all summer, someone asks me for help or advice on buying a bike. Now, inspired by the famous Rob Gruhl, I’m prepared to give a talk that covers everything you need to know to buy a bicycle.

Ellen Beeman (guonbeeman) Quit your Job, Get a Career
This 5 minute talk will cover how to evaluate, with specific criteria, whether your current job is building or harming your career, why and how you want to build a professional network of your current coworkers, and how those coworkers will get you your next job.

Always wanted to give an Ignite Seattle talk? Do you have an idea for a 5-minute talk that’s been burning inside of you, crying to get out? Or do you have an idea that you think is a little bit crazy, but you’re figuring “what the hell, I’ll submit it anyway”.

To be considered for the next Ignite Seattle, we need your submissions by this Friday, May 14th. We’d love to have you on stage.

Submit your talk here.

Photos from the Ignite Seattle Group Pool on Flickr. If you took pictures at Ignite Seattle 9, please add them to the pool with the tag “is9” and they’ll show up here.

Additionally, you can view pictures from all the previous Ignite Events on our Photos page.

We’ve got a great line up for our next event, held once again at the King Cat Theatre on March 4th at 7pm. Here is the list of speakers for Ignite Seattle 9 (in no particular order).

The Speakers

Ben Huh (@benhuh) Evolution of the Meme
I’ll walk u through the history of viral ideas.

Nicole Steinbok (@nicolesteinbok) 22 Minute Meetings
Meetings are a huge productivity & time suck. This humorous talk will explain how to fix that in 9 easy steps.

Amanda Koster (@salaamgarage) How I made sense of my trip to Vietnam.
Ranging from chopsticks and fish sauce, to ‘bombies’ and landmine victims; I’ll show how my trip to post war Vietnam can actually be put into a context that makes sense for all.

Andrew Lueck – Self Publishing
Four years ago I set out to illustrate, author and publish my own children’s book. Being the impatient “control” freak that I am I quickly realized that the traditional book publishing process was arcane and would compromise my vision, my voice and take a lifetime to complete. My answer, self-publishing!

Becky Anderson (@beckyan) Business Lessons from Star Wars
Running a business ain’t like dusting crops! Without knowing Star Wars, you could fly right through a star, or lose half your staff, and that’d end your trip real quick, wouldn’t it?

Dan Reeder (@DanMonsterMan) Papier Mâché 3.0
Renowned author and creator, Dan Reeder brings us the state of the art in papier mâché and the monsters he wants you to make.

Todd Sawicki (@sawickipedia) Things you don’t want to hear from the doctor: Your Wife has Breast Cancer
There’s no real good way to break the news, as Katie and I have learned – we just found out Katie has breast cancer. We’ve been telling the world since well before everyone could see from Katie’s baldness what was going on. And we learned a lot about how to tell people that you or someone important in your life has cancer.

David Albrecht (@davidralbrecht) Atoms > Bits
My friends and I spent a few months developing a low cost USB peripheral which allows people with cerebral palsy to use computers. I’ll detail our solution, explain our design process and demonstrate how low the bar (financial & technical) really is for getting started with hardware hacking.

Evangeline Marzec (@pocketprotector) How Microfinance Really Works
Go around the world with Kiva.org in five minutes or less. War stories from a Kiva Fellow after 6 months in the field, with insights on how, when and why microfinance works – and when it doesn’t.

Kathy Gill (@kegill) 5 Reasons To Take a Motorcycle Class (even if you never plan to ride a motorcycle)
A humorous look at two wheelers as commuting option.

Jason Preston (@jasonp107) and Mónica Guzmán (@moniguzman) How to Have an Argument
Accomplished contrarians, Ignite alums, and fiancées, Jason and Mónica will share the secrets of how to have an argument that doesn’t involve legal fees. Their talk also marks an Ignite first, a tag team talk.

Jeremy Calvert (jcalvert) KiteBot : DIY Kite Energy
Using kites to harness wind energy is getting increasing attention and investment world wide. We’ll breeze through a survey of the field, which has an evident emphasis on elaborate and expensive approaches. Then, we’ll deconstruct the fundamental problems that such a system must solve and present a solution that strives to be scalable, while also being accessible to the hobbyist.

David Cole (@davidscole) Playing with Fire – Create a metalcasting foundry in your garage.
I’ve recently discovered sand-casting, which is a very cheap and very awesome way of casting metal parts at home. You can make your own car parts, robot parts, science projects or artistic sculptures – anything!

Brian Aker (@brianaker) Guide to NoSQL

And the latest opus from Ignite Seattle artist-in-residence Scotto Moore.

——————-

All that and we should have a surprise speaker (or two). We look forward to seeing you there.

Admission Fee & Sponsors

We will be charging a $5 admission fee to cover our expenses.

Additionally, we are looking for 2-3 companies to sponsor this year’s events. Please contact josh /at/ kolaborationstudio.com if you are interested.

For the first time ever, Ignite Seattle will be charging at the door. We hope that you find the $5 a reasonable amount to part with for attending the event.

We are choosing to do this due to an increase in venue fees, to make Ignite Seattle sustainable (and not just coming out of volunteers pockets), and to contribute money to local education projects via Donor’s Choose.

Sponsors

In a similar vein, we are looking for 2-3 companies to sponsor this year’s events. Please contact josh /at/ kolaborationstudio.com if you are interested.

Do you have an idea for a 5-minute talk that’s been burning inside of you, crying to get out? Or do you have an idea that you think is a little bit crazy, but you’re figuring “what the hell, I’ll submit it anyway”. Today is your lucky day! Submissions for talks at the next Ignite Seattle are open today. We are looking for the next batch of lightning-fast, 5-minute, 20-slide presentations. Submission deadline is Friday, February 5th.

If you haven’t been to an Ignite yet, you can check out some of the previous talks on this blog, or at the Ignite Show podcast.

The next Ignite Seattle will be held on March 4th, as a part of Global Ignite Week. There are already 40 Ignites scheduled to be happening world-wide that week, with more still being added. Keep checking back here for updates. See you in March!

Photos from the Ignite Seattle Group Pool on Flickr. If you took pictures at Ignite Seattle 8, please add them to the pool with the tag “is8” and they’ll show up here.

Additionally, you can view pictures from all the previous Ignite Events on our Photos page.

Ignite Seattle 8 is tonight! As always we have a cornucopia of speakers talking about a variety of geek topics. The doors to the King Cat Theatre open at 7:00. The talks start at 8:30 PM. It makes “cents” to bring your art hat for tonight’s warm-up that starts at 7:30pm.

Here’s the line up (in order of appearance):

Eugene Lin – iPhoning my way to retirement, $.70 at a time
I want to be rich. Steve Jobs promised it. App after app, the Apple gods got angry with me. Until finally, with nothing but an accelerometer, two dozen naked women, and the nation of Japan, I had a story to tell.

Arianna O’Dell (arianna) How to Sneak into Bars
I am a 19 year old student at the University of Washington. Most people don’t know this because they never ask. I’ve been attending networking events all summer and most people think I’m out of school and already graduated.

Benjamin Franklin – Intellect: without an outlet in the world
Do we remain in awe of Ben Franklin’s capacity and accomplishments or do we take on his mantle of “Doing the best with what we have” and look at our issues and do something about them? Better yet, WWBFD? [Brady's note: This is going to be a presentation by someone done as Benjamin Franklin. You can learn more on his site.

Wendy Chisholm (wendyabc) Challenge your assumptions. Innovate. Change the world.
Most designers are taught to design for the average user and as a society we hold many assumptions about the characteristics of those users. However, products are used in unexpected ways and by unexpected audiences.

Jeremy Bingham (captain_tenille) An Astronomical Viewing Shelter on the Cheap
Using your telescope in the city can be frustrating with all the stray light all over the place. You can’t do much about the skyglow, but you can shield yourself from stray light sources nearby.

Jon Bell (jonbell) Usability Beyond the Classroom
It wasn’t until I spent a year at frog design as a developer that I realized everything I learned in art school was either wrong, outdated, or only told half the story.

Peter Wilson (peterwil) Google vs. Microsoft: An Insiders Guide
Google vs. Microsoft: where will the battles be fought, how will each companies strategies and blind-spots impact the outcomes, and who will win? The speaker spent 9 years at Microsoft and 4 at Google, and so thinks he knows something about this…

Scott Berkun (berkun) Everything you need to know about philosophy in 5 minutes
I’m the sad owner of a philosophy degree. I’m convinced i can give people a better education in philosophy (and make them realize how much they already know and love philosophy) in 5 minutes than I got in 4 years.

Part 2

Mike Tyka – Cubes in the Sky
We went through about 10 designs each trying to achieve the same goal of somehow raising the 15×15x15ft Groovik’s Cube, weighing near 4000 lbs 10 feet in the air within a fairly tight budget.

Richard Bailey – More blink in less time? Manufacturing electronics for art projects.
The Groovik Cube required a custom surface mount circuit board for each of the 56 facets. Early estimates showed that this would require well over 150 hours of time to accomplish. The Groovik electronics team created an assembly line and produced 90 boards in one day.

Sarah Schacht (sarahschacht) Overcoming Cacophony: Making Gov 2.0 Work for You
What can you do, as an individual to make your voice heard in the lawmaking process and what tools do you use? Learn how to make your email float to the top of a pile of thousands, how to stand out from the crowd, and how to do so without losing your sanity.

Veronica Sopher (Shih_Wei) Jewelry: It’s What Geeks Know!
Elizabeth Taylor and Ivanka Trump may have their own jewelry lines, but it’s geeks like you/us who are the experts in jewelry. Yes, it takes a real geek to know jewelry, cut through the salesperson’s bs, and shop like a pro. Let me show you why.

Norman Guadagno (thinktone) Amazon Archaeology OR Swimming In Our Own Clickstream
Every time we buy from Amazon, we give their algorithms a little more information about ourselves (or at least the things we buy). But, do we have our own algorithms to help us make sense of purchase after purchase across time? What can we learn about ourselves through the things we buy?

Dylan Wilbanks (dylanw) Everyone Core Dumps: Death and Loss For The Geek
We are all going to die. But handling loss is something geeks struggle with. Learn three things you should do when a friend dies, three things you shouldn’t do, and ways you can preserve your existence online.

Greg Dunlap (heyrocker) How to not suck at pinball
Pinball is hard. Luckily, getting better at pinball, not great but respectable, is actually pretty easy.

Jason Carmel (defenestrate99) Defamation and Twitter – A Practical Guide to Covering Your Ass
I will provide a few practical ways that might protect your right as an American to roast the bejeezus out of the asshats of the world, without getting sued into oblivion.

Ron Burk (ronburk) Three Strange Definitions of Computer Programming Legendary computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra once said: “Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.” But if programming is not about the computers, what IS it about?

See you there

We’re excited about Ignite Seattle and we hope to see there. If you are tweeting about the event, use #is8 and if you are taking photos, please add them to our Flickr group and/or Facebook page.

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.

The Speakers

Arianna O’Dell (arianna) How to Sneak into Bars
I am a 19 year old student at the University of Washington. Most people don’t know this because they never ask. I’ve been attending networking events all summer and most people think I’m out of school and already graduated.

Benjamin Franklin – Intellect: without an outlet in the world
Do we remain in awe of Ben Franklin’s capacity and accomplishments or do we take on his mantle of “Doing the best with what we have” and look at our issues and do something about them? Better yet, WWBFD?

Wendy Chisholm (wendyabc) Challenge your assumptions. Innovate. Change the world.
Most designers are taught to design for the average user and as a society we hold many assumptions about the characteristics of those users. However, products are used in unexpected ways and by unexpected audiences.

Sarah Schacht (sarahschacht) Overcoming Cacophony: Making Gov 2.0 Work for You
What can you do, as an individual to make your voice heard in the lawmaking process and what tools do you use? Learn how to make your email float to the top of a pile of thousands, how to stand out from the crowd, and how to do so without losing your sanity.

Eugene Lin – iPhoning my way to retirement, $.70 at a time
I want to be rich. Steve Jobs promised it. App after app, the Apple gods got angry with me. Until finally, with nothing but an accelerometer, two dozen naked women, and the nation of Japan, I had a story to tell.

Greg Dunlap (heyrocker) How to not suck at pinball
Pinball is hard. Luckily, getting better at pinball, not great but respectable, is actually pretty easy.

Scott Berkun (berkun) Everything you need to know about philosophy in 5 minutes
I’m the sad owner of a philosophy degree. I’m convinced i can give people a better education in philosophy (and make them realize how much they already know and love philosophy) in 5 minutes than I got in 4 years.

Jason Carmel (defenestrate99) Defamation and Twitter – A Practical Guide to Covering Your Ass
I will provide a few practical ways that might protect your right as an American to roast the bejeezus out of the asshats of the world, without getting sued into oblivion.

Jeremy Bingham (captain_tenille) An Astronomical Viewing Shelter on the Cheap
Using your telescope in the city can be frustrating with all the stray light all over the place. You can’t do much about the skyglow, but you can shield yourself from stray light sources nearby.

Jon Bell (jonbell) Usability Beyond the Classroom
It wasn’t until I spent a year at frog design as a developer that I realized everything I learned in art school was either wrong, outdated, or only told half the story.

Norman Guadagno (thinktone) Amazon Archaeology OR Swimming In Our Own Clickstream
Every time we buy from Amazon, we give their algorithms a little more information about ourselves (or at least the things we buy). But, do we have our own algorithms to help us make sense of purchase after purchase across time? What can we learn about ourselves through the things we buy?

Peter Wilson (peterwil) Google vs. Microsoft: An Insiders Guide
Google vs. Microsoft: where will the battles be fought, how will each companies strategies and blind-spots impact the outcomes, and who will win? The speaker spent 9 years at Microsoft and 4 at Google, and so thinks he knows something about this…

Ron Burk (ronburk) Three Strange Definitions of Computer Programming Legendary computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra once said: “Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.” But if programming is not about the computers, what IS it about?

Veronica Sopher (Shih_Wei) Jewelry: It’s What Geeks Know!
Elizabeth Taylor and Ivanka Trump may have their own jewelry lines, but it’s geeks like you/us who are the experts in jewelry. Yes, it takes a real geek to know jewelry, cut through the salesperson’s bs, and shop like a pro. Let me show you why.

Dylan Wilbanks (dylanw) Everyone Core Dumps: Death and Loss For The Geek
We are all going to die. But handling loss is something geeks struggle with. Learn three things you should do when a friend dies, three things you shouldn’t do, and ways you can preserve your existence online.

And for an Ignite first, similar topic, back-to-back presentations:

Richard Bailey – More blink in less time? Manufacturing electronics for art projects.
The Groovik Cube required a custom surface mount circuit board for each of the 56 facets. Early estimates showed that this would require well over 150 hours of time to accomplish. The Groovik electronics team created an assembly line and produced 90 boards in one day.

Mike Tyka – Cubes in the Sky
We went through about 10 designs each trying to achieve the same goal of somehow raising the 15×15x15ft Groovik’s Cube, weighing near 4000 lbs 10 feet in the air within a fairly tight budget.

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.

Submit your talk here

Summer’s almost over and we’ve packed up the kids and sent them to school, returned from Burning Man, and are gearing up once again for our next Ignite Seattle.

For this fall’s edition, we’re trying something new: planning ahead. We’re opening submissions today for our next Ignite Seattle which will take place on December 1st at the King Cat Theatre. Help us turn over a new leaf by getting your submissions in well before the October 19th deadline.

Submit your talk. We ♥ early submissions.

We look forward to seeing you all on December 1st!

Here’s a Flickr slideshow of all the photos from the Ignite Seattle photo pool with the tag, Ignite Seattle 7, sorted by interestingness. If you took photos at Ignite Seattle, please add them to our Flickr pool.

Videos of Ignite Seattle 7 will be posted soon.

Despite temperatures rising a little higher than we would have liked, Ignite Seattle 7 was certainly our biggest and may have been the best Ignite Seattle yet.

Attendance-wise, we broke a record, with just a hair under 700 people in attendance. Additionally, we had a bunch of folks watching our first ever live video stream (courtesy of Bryan Zug at Lilipip).

Ignite 7 around the web

Great event summary from Anthony Stevens – Ignite Seattle 7 Recap and Review
Randy Stewart – Ignite Seattle 7 in Photos
Ted Leung – Flickr photoset

• Building Blocks Show – Ignite Seattle 7 Complete with Food Enthusiasts
• Seattle Metblogs – Monday Agenda: rumble, ignite

From our speakers

• Todd Sawicki – How I Learned to Like Ballet (Being Married to a Professional Ballet Dancer) – A Primer on Ballet
  
• Deepak Singh – Bite sized Big Data
• Lee LeFever – Speaking at Ignite Seattle August 3rd
• Matthew Amster-Burton – More Monkey than Ever

Thank you

Thank you to everyone who spoke at Ignite 7. We couldn’t have Ignite without fantastic speakers and we are privileged to have funny, intelligent (and brief) speakers who are willing to entertain and inform us.

Finally, thank you to the audience who brought their friends, told their relatives and snuck out of the house on a Monday night just to join us. Our speakers would be talking to themselves without you Seriously though, the best thing about Ignite is that YOU could be one of our next speakers.

We’ll be back in the fall for the next Ignite event. We’ll keep you posted on the blog and on Twitter as to the exact date. Until then, we’ll be posting videos of last night’s event to fill the void.

Ignite Seattle 7 is tonight! As always we have a great crop of speakers talking about a variety of geek topics. The doors to the King Cat Theatre open at 7:00. The talks start at 8:30 PM. We are going to have a massive Rock-Paper-Scissors contest at 8:00.

Set 1 – 8:30pm

Yoram Bauman – Principles of economics, translated
Translates for a lay audience the 10 principles of economics from Harvard professor Greg Mankiw’s best-selling textbook.

Mandy Sorensen (mandercrosby) – What To Do With 60 Minutes in Whale (and How I Learned to Use a Machete!)
Ever wondered what to do with a half-alive beached whale on a remote island in the Pacific?

Daniel Westreich (danielwestreich) – Causal inference is hard; or how I learned to stop worrying and love counterfactuals
The philosophical and practical problems of causal inference, and how to overcome these problems using randomized trials. With particular application to medical literature and epidemiology more generally.

Lee LeFever (leelefever) – Where Goldfish Come From
Everyone knows goldfish and koi, but very few have ever thought about where they come from – how they are bred, raised, transported, etc. I know these things like the back of my hand.

Rob Gruhl – How to Take Better Pictures
The person who taught you how to buy a car is going to teach how to take beautiful photos.

Vanessa Fox – (@vanessafox) – Life’s Too Short To Eat Bad Food
And you certainly don’t want to feed bad food to your friends. Achieve deliciousness in just about the time it takes to give an Ignite talk.

Todd Sawicki (sawickipedia) – How I learned to Appreciate Dance Being Married to a Ballerina
Often times we see talks about how spouses deal with being married to geeks and startup jocks, now its time to turn the tables. This is a talk on what I’ve learned about ballet and how to appreciate it being married to a former professional ballerina. Hopefully you too will be able to tell the difference between a first and fifth position and a Plié vs. a Passé. Even a geek can learn to love classical dance.

Dan Shapiro (danshapiro) – Making Benjamin Fly: Geeking out aero-style for about a hundred bucks
When I was a kid, RC 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. What do you get? I’ll show you. And I’ll show you how to get it up, for about one benjamin.

Mehal Shah (mehals) – Fighting Dirty in Scrabble
Are you tired of your family thrashing you at Scrabble? Do you wince when someone brings out that red box at board game night? Are you ready to wipe the smug grin off the face of your significant other who pulls 7-letter words out of nowhere?

Jessica Hagy (thisisindexed.com) – Lies To Ignore
Graphs can contain both Truth and Deception.

Set 2 – 9:30 PM

Scotto Moore – CPU
Our artist-in-residence, is back with another digital fairy tale.

Lauren Bricker (brickware) – Geek Generation
Don’t call me a teacher, I’m more of a Geek Generator. I have kids (9 and 18), both who love computers and yes, they’ve already learned how to program. But apparently that wasn’t enough for me. For the last two years I’ve been teaching computer science at a local private high school. It’s incredibly interesting, rewarding, and yes, a lot of work. My goal with this talk is to generate more Geek Generators.

Elan Lee (elanlee) – I Wish I Was Taller
I filed a bug on my life with a major software company in Redmond.

Willow Brugh (willowbl00) – Creating Communal Creative Space
The experience of building a maker space from scratch is certainly a project – I’ll talk about my experience in doing so, what advice others have shared with me, and what spaces like this are already available in Seattle (and perhaps elsewhere on the West Coast).

Gregory Heller (gregoryheller) – What Makes The Greenest Cab?
Green transportation is all the rage these days, especially hybrid 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 NYC TaxiCab often sets the pace for the rest of the country’s cabs. However 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.

Mónica Guzmán (moniguzman) – Addiction! Staying afloat in the age of the stream
Glued to email, your RSS reader or Twitter? Has your hand grown by 133 grams and the approximate weight of an iPhone? The Web is a stream, and it’s easy to drown. Tips, tricks and cautionary tales from a reporter who swims the stream to stay on top of local news, but has learned the hard how easy it is to get carried away.

Deepak Singh (mndoci) – Big Data and the networked future of science
New instruments, sensors, distributed scientific collaboration, informal publication channels = lots of data. How do we crunch it? How do we share it? How do we distribute it? This talk will dive into (a very very fast dive) into the challenges and solutions of the big science of today and tomorrow. Exascale anyone?

Matthew Amster-Burton – (@mamster) What is Baby Food?
Sushi, stew, and spicy enchiladas for babies, from the author of Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father’s Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater.

We’re excited to announce the final five speakers for Ignite 7, which will be held this coming Monday, August 3 at the King Cat Theater.

The Final Five

• Jessica Hagy (thisisindexed.com) tells us which lies to ignore.
• Rob Gruhl, the person who taught you how to buy a car is going to teach how to take beautiful photos.
• Vanessa Fox – (@vanessafox) brings the SEO expert’s guide to food.
• Scotto Moore, our artist-in-residence, is back with another digital fairy tale, “CPU.”
• Matthew Amster-Burton – (@mamster) a local food writer talks about raising a foodie.

Here’s the list of previously announced speakers for Ignite 7.

We look forward to seeing you on Monday!

Because you demanded it, here’s the list of speakers for Ignite Seattle 7 being held a week from Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at the King Cat Theater.

We have an all-star line up of some of the most ingenious, fascinating and inspiring geeks from across the world (or at least in or around Puget Sound).

The Speakers

Daniel Westreich (danielwestreich) – Causal inference is hard; or how I learned to stop worrying and love counterfactuals

Lee LeFever (leelefever) - Where Goldfish Come From
Everyone knows goldfish and koi, but very few have ever thought about where they come from – how they are bred, raised, transported, etc. I know these things like the back of my hand.

Since 1965, my family in North Carolina has owned and operated one of the largest fish hatcheries in the US. Blue Ridge Fish Hatchery raises and sells goldfish and Koi – 10’s of millions of fish a year.

Dan Shapiro (danshapiro) – Making Benjamin Fly: Geeking out aero-style for about a hundred bucks
When I was a kid, RC 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. What do you get? I’ll show you. And I’ll show you how to get it up, for about one benjamin.

Mandy Sorensen (mandercrosby) – What To Do With 60 Minutes in Whale (and How I Learned to Use a Machete!)
Ever wondered what to do with a half-alive beached whale on a remote island in the Pacific?

Mehal Shah (mehals) – Fighting Dirty in Scrabble
Are you tired of your family thrashing you at Scrabble? Do you wince when someone brings out that red box at board game night? Are you ready to wipe the smug grin off the face of your significant other who pulls 7-letter words out of nowhere?

Elan Lee (elanlee) – I Wish I Was Taller
I filed a bug on my life with a major software company in Redmond.

Lauren Bricker (brickware) – Geek Generation
Don’t call me a teacher, I’m more of a “Geek Generator.” I have kids (9 and 18), both who love computers and yes, they’ve already learned how to program. But apparently that wasn’t enough for me. For the last two years I’ve been teaching computer science at a local private high school. It’s incredibly interesting, rewarding, and yes, a lot of work. My goal with this talk is to generate more Geek Generators.

Willow Brugh (willowbl00) – Creating Communal Creative Space
The experience of building a maker space from scratch is certainly a project – I’ll talk about my experience in doing so, what advice others have shared with me, and what spaces like this are already available in Seattle (and perhaps elsewhere on the West Coast).

Mónica Guzmán (moniguzman) – Addiction! Staying afloat in the age of the stream
Glued to email, your RSS reader or Twitter? Has your hand grown by 133 grams — the approximate weight of an iPhone? The Web is a stream, and it’s easy to drown. Tips, tricks and cautionary tales from a reporter who swims the stream to stay on top of local news, but has learned the hard way how easy it is to get carried away.

Gregory Heller (gregoryheller) – What Makes The Greenest Cab?
Green transportation is all the rage these days, especially hybrid 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 NYC TaxiCab often sets the pace for the rest of the country’s cabs. However 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.

Todd Sawicki (sawickipedia) – How I learned to Appreciate Dance Being Married to a Ballerina
Often times we see talks about how spouses deal with being married to geeks and startup jocks, now its time to turn the tables. This is a talk on what I’ve learned about ballet and how to appreciate it being married to a former professional ballerina. Hopefully you too will be able to tell the difference between a first and fifth position and a Plié vs. a Passé. Even a geek can learn to love classical dance.

Yoram Bauman – Principles of economics, translated
Translates for a lay audience the “10 principles of economics” from Harvard professor Greg Mankiw’s best-selling textbook.

Deepak Singh (mndoci) – Big Data and the networked future of science
New instruments, sensors, distributed scientific collaboration, informal publication channels = lots of data. How do we crunch it? How do we share it? How do we distribute it? This talk will dive into (a very very fast dive) into the challenges and solutions of the big science of today and tomorrow. Exascale anyone?

UPDATE: July 31, 2009
Jessica Hagy (thisisindexed.com) tells us which lies to ignore.

Rob Gruhl, the person who taught you how to buy a car is going to teach how to take beautiful photos.

Vanessa Fox – (@vanessafox) brings the SEO expert’s guide to food.

Scotto Moore, our artist-in-residence, is back with another digital fairy tale, “CPU.”

Matthew Amster-Burton – (@mamster) a local food writer talks about raising a foodie.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone who submitted. As usual, we had an embarrassment of riches to choose from and making this list was extremely difficult. If we didn’t pick you, please don’t be discouraged, we live and die by your submissions.

A little retroactive blogging. Published October 20, 2009