Ignite is Thursday; 4th Batch of Speakers

Here’s another batch of talks:

Thomas Schmitz (SEOcritique.com, ) – Become a Marketing Piranha

Think about the piranha. You know, that monstrous tiny little fish. By itself its just small and ugly. It might nip at you, but you can easily get away. As a school, piranhas are fierce and can take down large prey. You wouldn’t want to be a caribou in a pack of hungry piranhas. If you set aside the horror movie connotation there is a lesson here. By working together the piranhas get the caribou and there is enough food for each fish. The piranhas are the sellers in your market or the members of your network. The caribou is the market, the buyers and the prospects. It’s a big Amazon river out there, but by working together it’s your school of fish that is enjoying the meal. I especially like this analogy because when you look at a school of feeding piranhas you will see that there is also competition within the pack. It’s not uncommon for individual fish to get pecked and cut-up a little. Still, there is enough caribou or market share for every fish to get a meal. Also related with concepts to be included, What Dr. Doolittle Can Teach About Marketing and Networking.

Brian McConnell (Worldwide Lexicon, Radio Handi) – Worldwide Lexicon – Participatory Translation For The Web

The Worldwide Lexicon enables website and blog authors to translate their sites through a combination of automated and human translation. The service, which is in internal testing, and will go to public beta shortly, works as follows: It monitors a site’s RSS feed for new works If possible, it obtains a rough machine translation to several target languages It creates a wiki page for each translation in progress The publisher directs readers to the wikis to participate in refining translations or starting translations to additional languages. We may be ready to demo on the 28th (not sure, but would like to present at Ignite this time or next). I can be reached at brian@mcconnell.net or 4154250833.

Karen Anderson (Writer Way, Biznik) – Workplace Survival Tips

I’m a graying geek with many years of tech workplace experience, most recently six years at Apple’s .Mac Internet Services and the iTunes Music Store. Workplace Survival Tips is quirky look at what’s over-rated, what’s under-rated and what’s absolutely essential in the workplace environment. Slides will cover the topics listed below. My presentation experience includes commentary for KUOW-FM. For a sense of my communication style, take a look at my blog, Writer Way. Teamwork Money Apologies Office Friendships Office Romances The “In” Crowd Indignation Martinis, Mojitos and Single Malts Making the Rounds Training Evil People Phone, SMS and Email Skills Humor Sweat Management Books The Impact of Visuals “Being Yourself”

Shelly Farnham (Waggle Labs, ) – Why Social Tagging Really Matters (to me): Semantic Overlays on Social Networks

Social tagging has revolutioned how we organize and retrieve online resources in systems such as Delicio.us, Flickr, and BlueDot. Yet, they have been incorporated into social networking systems in only rudimentary forms. I will talk about the potential for social tags to provide a semantic overlay to social networks, and illustrate how we used them to develop a social map of Seattle Mind Camp, and are incorporating them into our Pathable project.

Coe Roberts (Real Networks, ) – No-Frills Getting Things Done

Getting Things Done is a powerful system that you can use to run your whole life. But what if you don’t want to run your whole life? What if you just want to make sure some things don’t fall through the cracks? Here’s an easy-to-implement, low-overhead suggestion.

Eric Nevala (, ) – IT at Marine Headquarters, Al Anbar Province, Iraq

* As a local US Marine Reservist who recently completed a second tour of duty in Iraq, I maintained servers, software systems, databases, built web applications, and tested cutting edge technology in an unstable environment. * In my presentation are a series of photographs and antecdotes about some of the cool stuff that I worked on * The future of IT in the Marine Corps and the practical concept of mobile, virtualized server rooms with no downtime (And if I have time, some info about the centralized reconstruction management website application I developed for western Iraq) -Eric

Carl Coryell-Martin (Cassettes2Cds, ) – Tamasheq Technology: Living La Vie Nomad

What kinds of technology do you find 4 days of driving from the nearest paved road? In the winter of 2005, I spent a month living and traveling with members of an extended Tamasheq family in the deserts of central Mali, West Africa. This will be a quick tour of the tools and systems from sat phones to forges to food preservation practiced by one tribe of modern African nomads. (I’m sorry I missed the submission deadline, for some reason I didn’t see the email announcement that you were open to proposals. This is one of two talks I’m interested in giving. The linked photo gallery is on my sister’s website but is almost exclusively my work.)

Scott Berkun (, ) – Attention and Sex

What things in your life demand undivided attention? Whatever they are, I claim they define your life more than anything else you do. Your obituary will not list the hours you fought off boring meetings or ignored your friends by reading forgettable blurbs about forgettable things on your cell phone. This talk explores how the wise and happy throughout history have avoided situations that divided their attention.

As you can see we’ve got a bunch of great talks lined up for you. The final schedule will be up tomorrow. Note that the Marketing talk on gender and the talk on Epidemiology have both been canceled; we hope the speakers will be able to speak at the next Ignite.

Ignite Seattle is a geek event that combines on-site geekery, sharing, and innovation (and drinking). The THIRD one will be held upstairs at the CHAC on Thursday, April 5th. The Make Contest will begin at 6:30; the Ask Later talks will begin at 8:30. Videos and photos from the previous Ignite are available. Admission is free.

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