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.

Here are the speakers for tonight’s Ignite Seattle. The first set goes on at 8:30PM. The second set will take stage at 9:45PM. Doors are at 7PM and the cost is $5.

Speakers: First Set

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Sol VillarealYou Paid For It – You Might As Well Use It
A quick guide to the City of Seattle from a member of the McGinn Administration

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.

Brian Aker (@brianaker) Guide to NoSQL
Putting your thinking caps on. This talk will be hardcore geek.

Harold Carlton – How robots have revolutionized ball point pen manufacturing
Without robots we’d still be using pencils! Bah! Who wants pencils?

Speakers: Second Set

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

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.

Beth Kolko – The King Road Drag, Post-Apocalyptic Scenarios, and Why Sen. Stevens Was Sort of Right About the Tubes
The ability to move information from place to place is the cornerstone of civilization! So, trucks as much as tubes come into play if we want to really think about how creating innovative ways to move bits around can change the world.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

A little warm up for tonight’s event, Jason Carmel’s fantastic (and hysterical) talk about the legal do’s and don’ts involving Twitter.

Here’s Jason’s pitch:

Should you really send that tweet calling your competitor a “douchebag”? What about that status update letting the world know how your mechanic is a “lying, cheating scumbag who would steal medicine from a pediatric ward?” How liable are you for giving all the baddies out there a well-deserved, spleen-filled bitch-slap?

In this talk, I will walk through a very quick explanation of defamation law and explain how it might apply to the social media landscape. I will also 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.

About Jason Carmel

During the day you can find Jason Carmel as a senior optimization manager at ZAAZ. You can also find him on Twitter @defenestrate99

Ignite Seattle #9 is this Thursday! It’s going to be at the King Cat Theatre. Doors open at 7:00PM. To cover rising costs the door price will be $5.

It’s one of 65+ Ignite events happening around the world right now. You can follow the action at http://igniteshow.com and on Twitter with the #giw tag.

Ignite Seattle Details
Ignite Seattle will feature ~15 speakers. Doors will open at 7:00PM. The gumdrop building contest starts at 7:30PM and the talks will start at 8:30PM. We have had our venue costs go up significantly and we will be charging $5 at the door.

Synapse!
We’d like to welcome Ignite Seattle’s first sponsor! Synapse designs nifty products.

Sponsor Ignite Seattle
We are looking for more sponsors. You’ll be put on the website, tweeted about, thanked profusely at the event and have the heart-warming knowledge that you helped make Ignite possible.

21+ Only
Unfortunately, due to pressure from the State Liquor Board the King Cat is no longer able to support a mixed age crowd. This sucks. We know it sucks, however we can’t expect the venue to risk losing its license. Right now the King Cat is the only venue in town that is feasible. If you know of another let us know.

Global Ignite Week
What started in Seattle has spread around the world. During the first ever Global Ignite Week there are ~65 events happening on 6 continents. On Thursday there will be over 30 events.

http://IgniteShow.com/Seattle
Ignite has launched a video portal. There are almost 40 cities represented with several hundred videos aggregated together. Start with Seattle, but definitely check out other cities’ talks.

Top 10 Reasons You Should Go To Ignite
Mashable wrote up a very insightful list of reasons to come to Ignite. If you need help getting your housemate to join you for the evening, send it to them.

Speaker Line-up
Randy has posted them.

Ron’s pitch:

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?

I want to give you three strange definitions of computer programming that will forever change how you think about software. Exploring the true nature of programming requires tracing its connections with philosophy, psychology, evolution, and physics, and following these threads leads to a startling conclusion: computer programming is not a product of the mind of humans – it’s a product of the mind of the universe!

About Ron Burk

Ron Burk has been a programmer for 30 years, a magazine editor (Windows Developer’s Journal) for 10 years, and an amateur medical researcher for 5 years (publishing papers on treating the anemia of cancer, and the relationship of melatonin to chemotherapy symptoms).

He is currently writing “The Pop Psychology of Programming”, a synthesis of psychology and computer programming. You can find Ron on his blog and on Twitter @ronburk.

Norman’s Pitch

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?

Over the past 13 years, I have made far more purchases from Amazon than I care to count (actually, I have counted and will share). Why did I buy lots of batteries and have them shipped to my mother? Why did I buy an “Interactive Yoda with Lightsaber” and where is it now? Do web design books from 1999 still have relevance today?

Join me on a whirlwind tour of my 1-Click® habit and the things some of these books should have taught me.

About Norman Guadagno

Norman is a Principal/Interactive Practice Lead at Methodologie. You can find him on his blog, on Twitter at @thinktone and perhaps most importantly, his profile on Amazon.

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.

About Peter Wilson

You can find Peter at Peter Wilson Consulting (although there may be something else he’s working on) and on Twitter peterwil.

Editor’s note: TechFlash has a write up of Peter’s talk as well as a “bootleg” version of the video .

Scott’s pitch:

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.

About Scott Berkun

Scott Berkun is a friend of Ignite and we’ve referenced his last talk “How and Why to Give an Ignite Talk” when anyone asks that very question. Scott’s work as a writer and public speaker has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Wired magazine, National Public Radio and other media. His latest book, which is near and dear to us at Ignite, is “Confessions of a Public Speaker.”

You can find Scott on his blog and Twitter at @berkun.

Veronica’s pitch:

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.

About Veronica Sopher

During the day, Veronica is on the merchandising team at Ben Bridge Jeweler. She also serves at the community director of Social Media Club Seattle.

You can find Veronica on her blog and on Twitter (@Shih_Wei)

Mike and a bunch of his friends wanted to build a huge interactive Rubik’s Cube at Burning Man. They went through about 10 designs each trying to achieve the same goal of somehow raising the 15×15×15ft Grooviks Cube, weighing near 4000 lbs 10 feet in the air within a fairly tight budget.

About Michael Tyka

Dr. Michael Tyka is a senior fellow at The Baker Laboratory at the University of Washington’s Biochemistry department. He spoke at Ignite Seattle 6 about “The Invention of the Wheel.”

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.

Our challenge: Do we remain in awe of his 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?

Health care, alternate energy, grass roots organizing, empowering small groups of people to do great things, advancing learning and changing the world with shared ideas. Benjamin Franklin gave us a blueprint. We can build a better world with it.

About Benjamin Franklin

Here is a short list of Benjamin Franklin’s accomplishments: retired from business at age 42; established the connection between lightening and electricity; devised a flexible catheter and bifocals; charted the Gulf Streams and the weather’s circulation patterns; created business opportunities for his apprentices and, on their deaths, encouraged their wives to run the businesses; extended the sharing of knowledge through his creation of the first lending library; and as Postmaster General improved the early Internet (the Post Office).

You can find Benjamin Franklin on the web at www.ben-franklin.org.

Pinball rules. Everyone loves to play. However everyone also loves to win, and the fact is pinball is hard. Luckily, getting better at pinball … not great but respectable … is actually pretty easy.

In this talk Greg Dunlap goes over the basics that will help you propel your game to the next level.

About Greg Dunlap

When Greg isn’t not at Shorty’s in Belltown, you can find him as a developer at Palantir.net. You can find Greg at his Web site, his Drupal blog and on Twitter @heyrocker.

You can find more about how to get better at pinball at Pinball.org and from the Pinball 101 video, both mentioned in Greg’s talk.

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.

Doesn’t it seem like there’s a lot of “Gov 2.0″ stuff out there right now? What can you do, as an individual to make your voice heard in the lawmaking process and what tools do you use?

This Ignite talk focuses on how to overcome the bureaucratic and technology challenges to communicating effectively with your lawmakers. By the end of five minutes, you’ll know 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 (or much free time.)

About Sarah Schacht

Founder and director of Knowledge as Power, a non-profit group helping empower people to influence legislature. You can find Sarah on Twitter account, @sarahschacht.

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.

Rather than buying a pre-made shelter for hundreds of dollars, you can build one for about a hundred dollars. Jeremy Bingham will demonstrate in his talk how he did just that with a lot of PVC, some found wood, and a bunch of felt.

About Jeremy Bingham

When he’s not hanging out in his astro-shelter, you can Jeremy Bingham at his day job as the CTO for DailyKos.com, on his blog or on Twitter, @captain_tenille.

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.

Challenging your assumptions and designing for non-average users can result in innovative products that can lead to a more inclusive, just society. And eventually, world peace.

About Wendy Chisholm

Wendy has focused on inclusive design since 1995 and co-wrote the book, “Universal Design for Web Applications” with Matt May in 2008.

You can find Wendy on her blog and on Twitter, @wendyabc. You can also find her dressed as Wonder Woman in a web comic with the other HTML5 Super Friends.

Full transcript after the jump. Thanks, Wendy!

Inclusive Universe

[music]

Wendy Chisholm:

[0:08] Hello. OK, so I spend a lot of my time thinking about the world and what the world would be like if it were accessible to everyone. If everyone, including people with disabilities, could participate in all the good stuff that we’re doing. Whether it’s the Internet or just getting into the building, you’re not the only one who may have to come in through the side door.

[0:25] So when we look at design and how important it is, design can either create barriers or it can get rid of barriers. It can either help us include everyone, or it can hinder or exclude people. And so it’s the stairs that make a building inaccessible, not a wheelchair.

[0:41] What I’m going to talk about today is how important design is in creating this vision of the world that I would love to see happen.

[0:51] Wow, I actually I had a little extra time there.

[0:53] OK, we want to make inclusion beautiful. There are so many products built for people with disabilities, and they function OK. They are usually pretty clunky, and they’re not at all very pretty. So no one is very proud of using those tools, and they don’t feel very empowered.

[1:09] But if we look back at the development of eyeglasses, in the 1930s they were considered shameful and icky and no one wanted to wear them. So you had glasses that were flesh colored, to hide that you needed glasses. You were considered a patient. You didn’t actually wear the glasses.

[1:26] But now they’re a fashion accessory. People who don’t even need eyeglasses wear them because they are cool and they make you look good. They can create character for you.

[1:36] And so, what if we were to apply that same kind of design to other products? So this is Aimee Mullins. She’s not wearing boots. Those are wooden legs. They’re beautifully carved. There’s flowers and all sorts of neat stuff. And that’s because she spoke at TED and said, "Hey designers, give me some legs that look good." And she got all sorts of kinds of them.

[1:55] This is a dance troop from Seattle, and they are using "beauty in movement." And there are all sorts of movements that someone in a wheelchair can do that we can’t do with our legs. And so let’s look at the beauty in inclusion, and let’s also look at innovation.

[2:11] So there’s this long history of products that have been developed specifically for people with disabilities that have gone on to change how we shop and work and play and communicate. And one of my most favorite examples is an Italian couple. So, she was a countess, and he was an inventor. She was blind; he invented her a way to write him letters. And from that we get the keyboard, and we get all of the communication devices we’re using today: the keyboard in our computers.

[2:40] My favorite current example is the iPhone, because without a screen magnifier that was developed for people with low vision, we would not be able to use the iPhone. Everyone who has an iPhone experiences low vision, because you have such a constrained view of your world, and you get to magnify it. That was developed for people with low vision, people with disabilities.

[3:01] So, this type of design is innovative, and you can really change the world. And it’s wonderful engineering problems to look at the non-average user.

[3:11] So, if I were granted three wishes, what would I wish for? Well, the first thing I would wish for is… I need a drum roll here. A naked parade.

[crowd cheers]

[3:28] Wendy: No. [laughs] What I would wish for is a parade. I would love to see a disability-pride parade happen. They’ve had them in Chicago and Ottawa. I want to see one in Seattle. Matter of fact, what I’d like to see even more than that is a human-pride parade. Let’s not exclude anybody; let’s celebrate all of us. Let’s celebrate our differences. Let’s celebrate our similarities. Let’s celebrate humanity. Because we’re pretty cool. And we could get naked if we wanted to, too.

[crowd cheers]

[3:54] Wendy: [laughs] And sing "The Rainbow Connection, " right?

[3:56] My second wish: accessible Burning Man. So, what if we had… [laughs]

[laughter]

[4:02] Wendy: This is such a beautiful piece of art. But how do you get to the top of it if you can’t climb? Can we come up with some really neat ways that involve accessibility in our art? Can we make Metropolis, which is the theme next year, accessible? I saw some beautiful things on the playa this year. I saw someone, they had attached a wheelchair to a bicycle, and they were just cruising around. I heard people talk about that the print wasn’t large enough. What can we do to make it accessible?

[4:29] My third wish is that as we’re creating green jobs and this green-collar workforce that people with disabilities are being trained and included in the workforce, and so we have green-collar jobs in an accessible environment. There’s a lot of people with disabilities who are unemployed.

[4:45] So, as we’re walking forward, inclusive design includes everybody, eight to 80, all throughout our lives. We’re all aging. We’re all going to need a lot of the products that I’ve been talking about. And so imagine a world that is accessible. Imagine a playa that’s accessible. Imagine a disability parade. And work with me. I would love to see these things happen, and imagine all the people sharing all the world.

[5:10] And that’s it. Thank you.

[crowd cheers]

[music]

It wasn’t until Jon Bell spent a year at Frog Design as a developer that he realized everything he learned in art school was either wrong, outdated, or only told half the story. Jon Bell condenses 10 years of design myth-busting into this action-packed talk.

About Jon Bell

During the day, you can find Jon Bell as an interaction designer at Frog Design. You can also find him on his personal site, blog and on Twitter. You can find the slides from Jon’s talk here.

If you are thinking about submitting a talk for the next Ignite Seattle (March 4th), make sure you get it in by this Friday. We already have a great crop of submissions, but we would love for you to add your own to the mix!

I often rewrite someone’s pitch better fit the blog, but in Eugene’s case, I thought it best left intact. Here’s Eugene’s pitch for his highly entertaining, “iPhoning My Way to Retirement” talk.

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.

About Eugene Lin

During the day, you can find Eugene Lin working for a large software company on the east side and you can find Software by Eugene’s iPhone software here, some of which are NSFW.