Author: jmartenstein

ThingOut! a DIY Festival

Ignite Seattle and Dorkbot Seattle are collaborating to bring you a new kind of festival this August. On the afternoon of Saturday, August 20th (before Ignite Seattle 15), we’ll be opening up the Fremont Outdoor Movie Cinema parking lot (N. 35th St. & Phinney Ave) for builders, garage hackers, diy makers and the generally curious. Everyone is encouraged to bring an interesting project to share or something to show off. There are a few caveats, though. We have a limited amount of power, so we can’t promise electricity for everyone. And if you’re bringing something dangerous (please do!), let us know, so we can make sure the appropriate signage gets posted.

If you’re interested in participating, or if you know of a cool project we should seek out, let us know in the comments of this post, or on the Facebook Wall. We’ll be adding additional information about the event as we get closer to the day. Get building!

Mousetrap Car Workshop this Weekend

We’re having our final Mousetrap Car Workshop this weekend. On Sunday night, from about 7 to 11, we’ll be down at Metrix Create:Space building mosuetrap cars. You’re welcome to bring your own supplies, mousetraps, whatever. We will have some construction items on hand. RSVP in the comments or on the Facebook page if you can make it.

In case you can’t get down to Metrix Sunday night, there are some supplies that will be available at Metrix throughout the week – just ask the staff. We’ll also have some kits on hand at Ignite on Thursday. Happy building!

The Next Ignite Challenge

In honor of Global Ignite Week, we’re trying something a little amibitious – mousetrap car races! For the Ignite Challenge, we will be pitting cars against each other to see who can get across the King Cat stage fastest.

Enter as a team or an individual. You are encouraged to build your car ahead of time – heck, you could even bring multiple cars. We’ll be holding two workshop nights at Metrix Create:Space in Capitol Hill – Sunday, January 16th and Sunday, January 30th. Some materials will be provided, but you can bring whatever you want, so long as the mousetrap is the sole source of power. For those that prefer to wait until the last minute, you will also have a chance to build a car at Ignite Seattle on February 10th.

So get cracking! There’s tons of resources on the web, including a fantastic instructables.com how-to. Thirty seconds of Googling should help you find some of the tips and tricks. Remember, we’re building for speed, not distance. Check back on this blog over the next month for updates.

Sneak Preview of Tonight’s Game

I have been extremely lucky to organize and present the icebreakers and challanges at the last few Ignite Seattle events. Tonight will be no exception. Attendees at tonight’s Ignite will get to play (for the first time ever!) Ignite: the Card Game.

The game is based off of Quorum, designed by Greg Costikyan and Frank Lantz. To go into any more detail would give too much away. And there will be prizes! You can get some hints about the cards and the prizes from the photo above. Also, after tonight we’re planning to release the game under the Creative Commons license, so other Ignite organizers can use it.

If you want to play, the game starts at 7:30p, and will run until the talks start. See you tonight at the King Cat!

Thanks, Seattle!

Last night, Ignite Seattle had the honor of winning the “Best Event for Startups” at the Seattle 2.0 awards. We won entirely through the community nominating us and voting for us, so we wanted to say a big “thank you”. Ignite Seattle would not be as fantastic an event as it is without your feedback, your talks and your participation. Thanks so much from all of us!

Techflash has a story on the event last night. Scroll down for a pic of Randy, Bryan and myself accepting the award. You can see a few more pics on the Seattle 2.0 Facebook page. We’ll see you on June 14th!

Submit a Talk for Ignite Seattle 9

Do you have an idea for a 5-minute talk that’s been burning inside of you, crying to get out? Or do you have an idea that you think is a little bit crazy, but you’re figuring “what the hell, I’ll submit it anyway”. Today is your lucky day! Submissions for talks at the next Ignite Seattle are open today. We are looking for the next batch of lightning-fast, 5-minute, 20-slide presentations.
If you haven’t been to an Ignite yet, you can check out some of the previous talks on this blog, or at the Ignite Show podcast.
The next Ignite Seattle will be held on March 4th, as a part of Global Ignite Week. There are already 40 Ignites scheduled to be happening world-wide that week, with more still being added. Keep checking back here for more updates. See you in March!

Do you have an idea for a 5-minute talk that’s been burning inside of you, crying to get out? Or do you have an idea that you think is a little bit crazy, but you’re figuring “what the hell, I’ll submit it anyway”. Today is your lucky day! Submissions for talks at the next Ignite Seattle are open today. We are looking for the next batch of lightning-fast, 5-minute, 20-slide presentations. Submission deadline is Friday, February 5th.

If you haven’t been to an Ignite yet, you can check out some of the previous talks on this blog, or at the Ignite Show podcast.

The next Ignite Seattle will be held on March 4th, as a part of Global Ignite Week. There are already 40 Ignites scheduled to be happening world-wide that week, with more still being added. Keep checking back here for updates. See you in March!

Ignite’s Recession Buster

We’re doing a special recession-themed icebreaker tonight, inspired by the Ten Thousand Cents art project. We’ll be handing out sheets of paper with a dollar bill on them (front or back), broken in to a 4×8 grid. Each team of 2 to 3 people will be responsible for re-creating one of the 64 grids. We’ll be providing paper and some drawing materials, but you’re encouraged to bring your own stuff, if you can.

Once the 30 minutes are up, we’ll collect all of the grids, and divide everyone up into two teams, one for each side of the bills. You’ll have 30 seconds to assemble all the grids and tape them to the wall. We’ll leave the drawings up for the rest of the evening so everyone can admire the art work.

We’re starting promptly at 7:30, so make sure you and your team are there on team, and ready to draw! Looking forward to seeing everyone tonight!

Ignite Seattle Returns!

After over a year on hiatus, Ignite Seattle is back, at a new venue (thanks to the King Cat Theater) on April 29th. Same as before, we’ll have 16 speakers – talks will be limited to 5 minutes a piece each 20 slides, so that’s 15 seconds a slide. It always goes faster than you think.

Right now, we’re looking for speakers – we have a form setup for you to apply in this post below.

We’re taking talk submissions from everyone — whether this is your first time or whether you’ve done an Ignite talk before.

Topics usually tend towards web 2.0, startups, life hacks, etc., but it can really be about anything that would appeal to a roomful of tech geeks and Internet junkies. Some of the favorite talks from last year included Hacking the Technical Interview and A Pseudoscience Guide to Geek Dating. You can view all of the recent talks on the Ignite Seattle YouTube channel.

We’re taking submissions until April 16th, and they’re accepted on a rolling basis, so submit early. We look forward to seeing you on the 29th!

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –