Scott Berkun

AMA with the Ignite Seattle Team (Thurs. Jan 25th, 7pm PST)

Come meet the Ignite Seattle organizing team for a fun and informal AMA (Ask Me Anything) session. Our speaker coaches and producers will be there to answer whatever questions you are curious about. Or maybe you have an idea or suggestion for us to consider.

This free event, open to all, will take place next Thursday, 1/25 at 7 pm PST on Zoom (Register Here).

Do you want to learn our secrets for organizing such great events? Want advice on pitching us your Ignite talk idea? Curious about what it’s like to be part of the Ignite team and want to join us? Or want public speaking tips from people who’ve literally walked the walk and talked the talk? This is the event for you.

We’ll be hosting this AMA (ask me anything) style where you’ll get to go behind the scenes of one of Seattle’s most popular live storytelling events. Speaker submissions are due in less than a month, so this is the perfect opportunity to get our feedback if you’re even just starting to brainstorm – you won’t want to miss out!

Free speaker coaching office hours (Tue Dec. 12th, 6pm PST, Zoom)

Want feedback on your public speaking skills? Have a talk idea you want to practice in front of an expert and a small friendly group? This is for you.

When: Tuesday, Dec. 12th, 6pm – 7:30 PST, Zoom (register here).
Cost: Free
Fun: Definitely

Details: All are welcome at this fun and informal online session run by me, Scott Berkun, the head speaker coach for Ignite Seattle and author of the bestselling book, Confessions of A Public Speaker.

Come with a talk idea or a presentation you want to practice. Any kind of presentation or story is welcome (does not have to be an ignite talk). Or come to be in the audience, listen in and learn tips, lessons and advice.

How it works:

Speaking slots are first come first served
Each speaker will get 2 to 3 minutes, no slides allowed
You can use a new story or something you’ve presented before, up to you
You will get actionable feedback and lessons
We will continue until we run out of speakers 🙂
There will be time for Q&A, so bring your questions

Support us: invite your friends!

If you like the shows we put on there are easy ways to contribute to what we do. As a 501(c)(3) non-profit we appreciate all the support we can get in promoting our shows and bringing more people to our events.

Just a minute or two is all it takes. Here’s what you can do:

Are you coming? Invite your friends and community to join you. Our events are great for groups, since there’s a pre-show social activity and a long intermission for drinks and conversations.
Have a friend who is speaking? Tag them on social media and ask their friends to attend with you to cheer them on.
Need a morale event at work? We’re an inexpensive way to bring a group together for a fun and memorable night of “edutainment.”
Out of ideas for date night? We’re a great experience for dates, more interactive and cheaper than a movie, plus our shows are great conversation starters (“what was your favorite talk and why?”). Here’s our recommended list of nearby places to eat before the show.

To help you help us, you can copy and paste this to your social media:

Join me on Thurs., October 26th for an evening of fun and inspiring talks at Town Hall Seattle. There’s a bar, easy social activities and more. Tickets $10/15: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/igniteseattle/873846

Hope to see you and your friends at our next event.

Ignite Seattle #43 recap: videos and photos

Thanks to all of you who joined 700+ in our live audience for yet another amazing evening of fun, powerful and surprising stories told in just five minutes.

Don’t wait too long to buy tickets to our next event on Thursday, Oct 26th (early bird tickets just $10).

And now here are videos of all of our speakers plus photos from evening.

Talk Videos

Full playlist of all talks (watch the whole show)
Surviving The Swimmers Cemetary, Kate Curtis
Protein polymers and yeast farts: a scientist becomes a baker, by Sam Blackman
Online Dating for Men Who Are Not Quite Dead, Eric Holdeman
Deal’n Drugs & Save’n Lives in the ER, by Fay Hosseini
Start a Sexual Revolution But Don’t Tell Your Mom, Alisa Eddy
You Don’t Just Need A Friend, You Need A Community!, Christiana Birkeland
How To Understand Patents – Using Frisbees, Adam Phillipp
How Masculinity Culture is Killing Men, Annie Kuo
Cut My Life Into Pizzas, Tricia Aung
The Holiday Card Dies with the Horse, Nancy Hostert-Ruiz

Photos from the event

Full archive of event photos for Ignite Seattle #43

One week until Ignite Seattle #43 (Thurs, March 16th)

We’re thrilled to bring you another edition of the best open submission public speaking event in the Northwest. Our event often sells out at the fantastic Town Hall Seattle, so get your tickets now before they’re all gone.

Our shows are a great, fun, social experience, perfect for a date night, catching up with old friends or even just to hang out with coworkers after work.

If you’ve never come before, or have missed a few, this is a great one.

Our speaker lineup (not listed in order):

You Don’t Just Need A Friend, You Need A Community! by Christiana Birkeland
Start a Sexual Revolution But Don’t Tell Your Mom by Alisa Eddy
Surviving the Swimmer’s Cemetery by Kate Curtis
Cut My Life Into Pizzas by Tricia Aung
How To Understand Patents – Using Frisbees by Adam Phillipp
Protein polymers and yeast farts: a scientist becomes a baker by Sam Blackman
How Masculinity Culture is Killing Men by Annie Kuo
Online Dating for Men Who Are Not Quite Dead by Eric Holdeman
The Holiday Card Dies with the Horse. by Nancy Hostert-Ruiz
Deal’n Drugs & Save’n Lives in the ER by Fay Hosseini

What to expect at the show:

Doors open at 6:30pm. Get there early for an optional pre-show activity!
Show starts at 7:30pm
One intermission halfway through
Show will end around 9pm

Doors open at 6:30pm (as does the cash bar). Talks start at 7:30pm, with an intermission.

If you want to grab food or a drink before the show, here’s our guide.

Talk Submissions for Ignite Seattle #43: Thursday deadline

We are coming up fast on Ignite Seattle 43. The event is Thursday, March 16th 7:00pm and tickets are on sale now.

If you’re not familiar with Ignite Seattle, this short video explains what our event is about. We regularly sell out at the main stage at town hall and have one of the friendliest and most supportive audiences in the world.

Submit talk ideas here. You can read our advice guide to understand what we look for.

SUBMISSIONS CLOSED FOR #43.

Tickets for the event are on sale now ($10 early bird / $15).

Help Wanted: two new positions

We are ramping up for our fist live event in over a year. Ignite Seattle #42 will take place at Town Hall on Thursday, Feburary 17, 2022.

At Ignite Seattle, our city’s largest open platform for citizen storytelling, it’s just a small team of volunteer organizers that make our sold-out shows happen. And we’re looking to grow that team.

If you’re not familiar with what our events are like, this short video explains it well.

1. Role: Event Marketing Lead

This may be the most fun marketing job in the universe. You get to plan, design and execute on engaging with our active community of fans and supporters. Tell our story on our blog, social media and partner channels. Come up with and deliver on creative and fun ideas to raise interest and attention. Primary goals include recruiting talk submissions, raising brand awareness and ensuring high attendance (safely) at our signature events. You need to be a self-starter who enjoys freedom, bias towards action and enjoys independence and a lot of creative control. You’ll collaborate with our friendly leadership team, but one of our principles is if you’re doing the work, you have wide discresion on how it gets done.

2. Role: You tell us!

Our small team is always in need of more good, reliable people. You could be a programmer, a project manager, a writer, a videographer – whatever skill you have we can probably find a way to use it. Your commitment can be small (help move things on the day of the event) or larger (contribute a few hours each of the 6 weeks before our big events).

Rewards: You’ll be part of a fun, smart and loyal team of volunteer organizers, well connected in the Seattle tech and arts community. You will meet many interesting and amazing people, work with a great team, and share in thrills at each live event. You’ll get to use skills you already have to do good in the arts community in Seattle. Ignite Seattle will likely be one of the most rewarding things you contribute to regularly.

How we work: We are mostly virtual (Slack), with monthly in-person meetings (when safe), and more as needed or when we get closer to the next event. We are all volunteers and happily wear many hats.

How To Apply:

Give us a brief rundown on your past experience (link to resume or LinkedIn is fine)
Tell us what you love about Ignite Seattle, and/or why you want to join the team?
Email the above to pr@scottberkun.com

October Inspirations from the Ignite Seattle Team

Seasons greetings from everyone at Ignite Seattle. We’ve missed you and the energy and community you bring to all of the events we do.

The team got most of us together in-person for the first time in far too long. We met for beers and snacks at Redhook on Capitol Hill and talked about our plans for the future and the possibility of our return to Town Hall early in 2022.

May be an image of 7 people, including Sumit Flux, Zachary Cohn, Randy Stewart and Scott Berkun — Volunteer organizers Marice Sy, Sumit Basu, Nicole Steinbok, Zac Cohn, Randy Stewart, Tyler Menezes and Scott Berkun, at Redhook (The rest of our team, including Jenny, Emily and Leigh were missed!)

We’ve missed all of you. And the energy you bring to all of the events we do. We wanted to share some energy back to you with some updates from our speakers.

Inspiring things our alumni have done:

Keisha Garrison, who spoke about inspiring courage from her daughter at an Ignite Seattle open night, left her corporate job to pursue being an emcee and storyteller full time.

Melissa Reaves, who talked about her family’s experience with OCD, started her own thriving storytelling coaching business, Storyfruition.

Science journalist Sally James, who gave a talk about better communication, won with her team at Matters of Gravity, a science game show.

Multi-talk alumni Sarah Schacht, who has talked about the wedding industry, the Me Too movement and her work on Seattle’s restaurant food safety posters, worked with the CDC and National Environmental Health Association, including new pool inspection standards being used across the U.S. this fall.

Colin Henry, who spoke about what he learned from the Navy and how it applies to managing engineers, announced the birth of his first child, a baby girl. And Bonnie Toland, who talked about the conflict built into the design of everyday life, was 3 months pregnant when she spoke, and her daughter is now 21 months old.
Kent Godfrey, who gave a fascinating talk about using animation and music to teach autistic children (and maybe everyone), is launching a podcast that explores how humans experience tone, rhythm and melody.

Linnea Westerlind, who gave a talk about her experience visiting every park in Seattle, started Outdoor Childhood Puget Sound, a group that promotes getting kids to spend more time outside.
Sixta Morel, who gave a talk about overcoming the Seattle Freeze, now works as an emcce, speaker and voice actor. She also hosts her own podcast of real life stories in Spanish.

Ginger Chien, who talked about a transgender band playing in rural WA, has had her talk used in virtual courses and as part of the D&I masterclass at universities.
Nancy McSharry Jensen, who talked about diversity and the reality of workplaces, published a book on finding your confidence after a career pause.
Marie Bolla, who presented about how to court women of color, is doing a writer’s residency to work on a book and a one person show.
Danielle Fague, who spoke about why you should love origami, visited this origami inspired sculpture by Hacer recently in NYC.

We’re so proud of these and all of our former speakers!

REQUEST: We’re looking for more inspiration: What have YOU been up to that you’re proud of or excited about since our Ignite #41 in March of 2020? It’s been a rough ride, but what has been something positive for you?

We need to know! Share it with us: leave a comment. It just takes a minute. Thanks.

Recap & Talk Videos: Charity Champions Event

A big THANK YOU to all who participated in last week’s Charity Champions edition of Ignite Seattle, especially our brave and talented speakers.

With your help, Ignite Seattle was able to donate over $5,000 to five amazing local non-profits and thanks to all who attended for helping us decide. This week donations will be made to the following organizations:

–Urban League Seattle: $800
–Seattle Latino Film Festival: $1332.26
–Northwest USO: $800
–Dress for Success Seattle: $1332.26
–Seattle Human Society: $800

If you want to (re)watch the talks, you can check out all the videos here.

While we don’t know when our next event will be, we hope to continue to find ways to help you share your stories. In the meantime, check out our website or find us on social media for more info.

Stay safe, do good, tell stories,
The Ignite Seattle Organizing Team

Ignite Seattle Returns: Thurs. April 29th 7:30pm

We’re hosting a special online storytelling event and we’re calling it Charity Champions. This has been a rough year for our city and here at Ignite Seattle we want to help those who have done so much to help our citizens. Our virtual stage will showcase personal stories about local non-profits.

It will be an evening of great stories and you can help us help those in need in Seattle.

Each story will feature a story about a local organization and they will receive grants totaling $4,000 + ticket proceeds. People who attend will help determine how the grants are allocated.

Charity Champion Speakers and Their Non-Profits:

Lorena Ware – My lucky suit (Dress for Success Seattle)
Craig Plain – Charity from your village (Northwest United Services Organizations)
Nari Weaver – I confess, I’m a gap addict! (Seattle Latino Film Festival)
Ginger Chien – Life turns: I decide which way to look (Seattle Humane Society)
The LuvLee Leroy – I see Yoda: The ‘Force’ is with me (Urban League – Seattle)

Tickets are FREE or you can donate money to add to what we will give to them. ALL ticket proceeds will go to the non-profits featured. Let’s support these speakers and their charities!

Get your tickets now.

A huge thank you to everyone who submitted stories. It was amazing to read about all the charity champions in our Ignite Seattle community. We appreciate you!

Stay safe, do good, tell stories,
The Ignite Seattle Organizing Team