Ignite Seattle 27, on May 20th 2015 will be the first time we’re going to have a theme for the evening. What’s a theme, you ask? Good question. What we want to do is an experiment. All previous Ignites have been a potpourri of topics, ideas, styles and attitudes. What would an evening of talks focused on a theme be like? Better? Worse? We want to learn.
And it’s only fitting for our first themed Ignite that we pick the theme of EXPERIMENTS!
An experiment is when you do something with the goal of verifying, refuting, or establishing the validity of a hypothesis. In other words, choosing to act fully aware you don’t know what’s going to happen.
Q: What kinds of talks do we want?
Good ones, of course. We’re looking for stories about an experiment you did in your life. It could be something you did at work, or the very idea of a career you tried to pursue. Maybe it’s about a place you moved to or a person you were trying to be with. It could be something deeply serious (an experiment of belief). Or perhaps it’s something very silly (an experiment in how many pierogis it takes to fill your car).
Q: Does the experiment have to have succeeded?
Absolutely not. The theme is not “amazing success stories!” We’re hoping to hear stories with a range of outcomes. Interesting failures, experiments that surprised you or your friends or changed how you look at something, including possibly yourself.
Q: Are the other restrictions on Ignite talks the same?
Mostly yes. Our default assumption as you might guess is that all talks will follow the Ignite format: 5 minutes, 20 slides, 15 seconds per slide. But we are open to the possibility of one or two talks that experiment with the format itself (If you attended Ignite Seattle 15 you witnessed chainsaw tricks by Jason Quick, a talk given from up on a trapeze, and other format twisters). If your idea for a talk involves an experimental format: perhaps you want to juggle chainsaws blindfolded (that’s an experiment if you’ve never done it before), do a talk in total darkness, or who knows what. If you have a format experiment be sure to submit your talk early and talk to us about it.
All Good? Good. You can submit your talk idea here.
(Here from Ignite 15 is Jason Quick, one armed performance artist)
Ignite Seattle 
Personally, one of the things I’ve always loved about Ignite Seattle is the openness of having such a wild variety of topics in an evening. I think having a theme is a step backwards, and I hope you’ll drop this idea after trying this experiment once.
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Variety is one of our favorite things too and we expect there will still be plenty of it. It’s an experiment for us and we’re convinced we need to do experiments so that we as organizers keep learning and get into the habit of trying out new ideas (which Ignite itself was when it started). I hope you’ll reserve judgement until after we’ve done this one. Maybe we’ll have a theme for one event a year, or we’ll never do it again. Who knows? We certainly don’t, at least not yet.
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Is there someone I can connect with to quickly discuss a talk to see if it falls into the experiments theme or what aspects of it could be presented to fit the theme? I’d like some pointers before submitting. Thanks!
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