The naked bicyclists are gone, but the geeks will be out in force in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood this weekend, as Ignite Seattle puts on its annual outdoor event, with an electronics swap meet as the opening act.
Ignite starts at 7:30 p.m. at the Fremont Outdoor Movies location. More details and tickets are available here. It will be preceded by a project showcase and electronics swap meet hosted by DIY community ThingOut, starting at 3:30 p.m. in the same spot.
On the off chance you’ve never heard of Ignite before, this phenomenon started in our fair city and has since spread around the world. It features a series of talks, each 5 minutes long, with 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds. Having given one of these talks in the past, I can attest to the difficulty of the format for the speakers, but for the audience it’s a great way to expose yourself to all sorts of fascinating topics in the span of a couple hours.
The evening will be hosted by author Scott Berkun, a legendary Ignite speaker. Team GeekWire is especially looking forward to the talk by GeekWire’s chief business officer, Rebecca Lovell, on how to “stop worrying and learn to love karaoke” — a topic she’s particularly well-suited to address. (One of her conditions for joining GeekWire was that we had to join her for karaoke first.)
Here’s the full lineup of speakers, via the Ignite Seattle site.
Sol Villarreal, Engage Seattle (or, how I learned to stop worrying and love local government)
Steven Chau, My shirt does more than sparkle
Lisa Phillips, How to skate like a rollergirl
Charlotte Lee, Collecting Rubber Ducks and the Path to Mastery
Beth Goza, The Elegant Art of Waiting in Line
Rebecca Lovell, stop worrying and learn to love karaoke
Matt Jensen, From STEM to STICK: How to Raise Engineers
Donald DeSantis, Manufacturing Awesome: Going viral in a crowded market
Edward Jiang, Learning about Technology by Building Cool Stuff
Shalendra Chhabra, America from the eyes of a first generation immigrant
Lisha Sterling, Unschooling For School-Schooling Families
Richard Johnston, Changing the World With a New Business Idea
Viv Ilo Veith, Brain kNew Information on Knoggins
Brad Wilke, How I Made a Piranhaconda, Got Killed by Camel Spiders…And Lived to Tell About It
Alissa Mortenson Tyka, The Shame Project
Adam Tratt, Bullet Control Now!
