Ignite Seattle 7 Speakers

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.