
Apologies for the terrible photo, it was packed!
Great job to everyone who gave presentations at tonight’s Ignite Minneapolis event. There were some insightful, funny, and useful presentations, but huge kudos to Make: television‘s very own Bill Gurstelle who kicked off the night with an energetic manifesto on the “art of living dangerously”. The take away was, according to Bill, many of the world’s best engineers and leaders have blown off at least one thumb by living dangerously, and a lot of innovation and merit comes along with taking big risks. Look for more this summer when his book comes out, Bill can explain it much better.

For those who are unfamiliar with the format of these events…
Ignite is a community-driven event comprising a series of speed presentations. Ignite events skew toward the geeky and wonkish, are usually innovative and fresh, and always involve drinking.
Basically, a person prepares a brief presentation on any topic. They get exactly 20 slides to tell their story, and each slide displays onscreen for exactly 15 seconds. So that’s 5 minutes per presenter.










This event, even for the inaugural effort that it was, was so much less that what it could have been. Truly a disappointment.
I agree with Steve. It completely sucked. It was totally full of asshole, hipster graphic artists who only know how to use Twitter and make ridiculous Flash interfaces. The venue was way too full. Trust me and skip this event totally if they ever bother to try and do it again.
Yay! Dave Packard. One of my make heroes!
I for one don’t think it is an accident that “twit” plays such a prominent role in twitter.
There were a few interesting talks that I caught before bailing, but I got the distinct impression that the majority of presenters were culled from an incestuous group of new media types there to congratulate each other on their cleverness. It was their party I guess but I had higher hopes for this event. Live and learn. Good beer though.
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