Ignite Seattle 9 Speaker Order

Here are the speakers for tonight’s Ignite Seattle. The first set goes on at 8:30PM. The second set will take stage at 9:45PM. Doors are at 7PM and the cost is $5.

Speakers: First Set

Jason Preston (@jasonp107) and Mónica Guzmán (@moniguzman) How to Have an Argument
Accomplished contrarians, Ignite alums, and fiancées, Jason and Mónica will share the secrets of how to have an argument that doesn’t involve legal fees. Their talk also marks an Ignite first, a tag team talk.

David Albrecht (@davidralbrecht) Atoms > Bits
My friends and I spent a few months developing a low cost USB peripheral which allows people with cerebral palsy to use computers. I’ll detail our solution, explain our design process and demonstrate how low the bar (financial & technical) really is for getting started with hardware hacking.

Todd Sawicki (@sawickipedia) Things you don’t want to hear from the doctor: Your Wife has Breast Cancer
There’s no real good way to break the news, as Katie and I have learned – we just found out Katie has breast cancer. We’ve been telling the world since well before everyone could see from Katie’s baldness what was going on. And we learned a lot about how to tell people that you or someone important in your life has cancer.

Amanda Koster (@salaamgarage) How I made sense of my trip to Vietnam.
Ranging from chopsticks and fish sauce, to ‘bombies’ and landmine victims; I’ll show how my trip to post war Vietnam can actually be put into a context that makes sense for all.

Becky Anderson (@beckyan) Business Lessons from Star Wars
Running a business ain’t like dusting crops! Without knowing Star Wars, you could fly right through a star, or lose half your staff, and that’d end your trip real quick, wouldn’t it?

Sol VillarealYou Paid For It – You Might As Well Use It
A quick guide to the City of Seattle from a member of the McGinn Administration

Jeremy Calvert (jcalvert) KiteBot : DIY Kite Energy
Using kites to harness wind energy is getting increasing attention and investment world wide. We’ll breeze through a survey of the field, which has an evident emphasis on elaborate and expensive approaches. Then, we’ll deconstruct the fundamental problems that such a system must solve and present a solution that strives to be scalable, while also being accessible to the hobbyist.

Brian Aker (@brianaker) Guide to NoSQL
Putting your thinking caps on. This talk will be hardcore geek.

Harold Carlton – How robots have revolutionized ball point pen manufacturing
Without robots we’d still be using pencils! Bah! Who wants pencils?

Speakers: Second Set

Ben Huh (@benhuh) Evolution of the Meme
I’ll walk u through the history of viral ideas.

Kathy Gill (@kegill) 5 Reasons To Take a Motorcycle Class (even if you never plan to ride a motorcycle)
A humorous look at two wheelers as commuting option.

Beth Kolko – The King Road Drag, Post-Apocalyptic Scenarios, and Why Sen. Stevens Was Sort of Right About the Tubes
The ability to move information from place to place is the cornerstone of civilization! So, trucks as much as tubes come into play if we want to really think about how creating innovative ways to move bits around can change the world.

Nicole Steinbok (@nicolesteinbok) 22 Minute Meetings
Meetings are a huge productivity & time suck. This humorous talk will explain how to fix that in 9 easy steps.

David Cole (@davidscole) Playing with Fire – Create a metalcasting foundry in your garage.
I’ve recently discovered sand-casting, which is a very cheap and very awesome way of casting metal parts at home. You can make your own car parts, robot parts, science projects or artistic sculptures – anything!

Andrew LueckSelf Publishing
Four years ago I set out to illustrate, author and publish my own children’s book. Being the impatient “control” freak that I am I quickly realized that the traditional book publishing process was arcane and would compromise my vision, my voice and take a lifetime to complete. My answer, self-publishing!

Evangeline Marzec (@pocketprotector) How Microfinance Really Works
Go around the world with Kiva.org in five minutes or less. War stories from a Kiva Fellow after 6 months in the field, with insights on how, when and why microfinance works – and when it doesn’t.

Dan Reeder (@DanMonsterMan) Papier Mâché 3.0
Renowned author and creator, Dan Reeder brings us the state of the art in papier mâché and the monsters he wants you to make.

TONIGHT! Speaker Line Up for Ignite Seattle 8

Ignite Seattle 8 is tonight! As always we have a cornucopia of speakers talking about a variety of geek topics. The doors to the King Cat Theatre open at 7:00. The talks start at 8:30 PM. It makes “cents” to bring your art hat for tonight’s warm-up that starts at 7:30pm.

Here’s the line up (in order of appearance):

Eugene LiniPhoning my way to retirement, $.70 at a time
I want to be rich. Steve Jobs promised it. App after app, the Apple gods got angry with me. Until finally, with nothing but an accelerometer, two dozen naked women, and the nation of Japan, I had a story to tell.

Arianna O’Dell (arianna) How to Sneak into Bars
I am a 19 year old student at the University of Washington. Most people don’t know this because they never ask. I’ve been attending networking events all summer and most people think I’m out of school and already graduated.

Benjamin FranklinIntellect: without an outlet in the world
Do we remain in awe of Ben Franklin’s capacity and accomplishments or do we take on his mantle of “Doing the best with what we have” and look at our issues and do something about them? Better yet, WWBFD? [Brady’s note: This is going to be a presentation by someone done as Benjamin Franklin. You can learn more on his site.

Wendy Chisholm (wendyabc) Challenge your assumptions. Innovate. Change the world.
Most designers are taught to design for the average user and as a society we hold many assumptions about the characteristics of those users. However, products are used in unexpected ways and by unexpected audiences.

Jeremy Bingham (captain_tenille) An Astronomical Viewing Shelter on the Cheap
Using your telescope in the city can be frustrating with all the stray light all over the place. You can’t do much about the skyglow, but you can shield yourself from stray light sources nearby.

Jon Bell (jonbell) Usability Beyond the Classroom
It wasn’t until I spent a year at frog design as a developer that I realized everything I learned in art school was either wrong, outdated, or only told half the story.

Peter Wilson (peterwil) Google vs. Microsoft: An Insiders Guide
Google vs. Microsoft: where will the battles be fought, how will each companies strategies and blind-spots impact the outcomes, and who will win? The speaker spent 9 years at Microsoft and 4 at Google, and so thinks he knows something about this…

Scott Berkun (berkun) Everything you need to know about philosophy in 5 minutes
I’m the sad owner of a philosophy degree. I’m convinced i can give people a better education in philosophy (and make them realize how much they already know and love philosophy) in 5 minutes than I got in 4 years.

Part 2

Mike TykaCubes in the Sky
We went through about 10 designs each trying to achieve the same goal of somehow raising the 15x15x15ft Groovik’s Cube, weighing near 4000 lbs 10 feet in the air within a fairly tight budget.

Richard BaileyMore blink in less time? Manufacturing electronics for art projects.
The Groovik Cube required a custom surface mount circuit board for each of the 56 facets. Early estimates showed that this would require well over 150 hours of time to accomplish. The Groovik electronics team created an assembly line and produced 90 boards in one day.

Sarah Schacht (sarahschacht) Overcoming Cacophony: Making Gov 2.0 Work for You
What can you do, as an individual to make your voice heard in the lawmaking process and what tools do you use? Learn how to make your email float to the top of a pile of thousands, how to stand out from the crowd, and how to do so without losing your sanity.

Veronica Sopher (Shih_Wei) Jewelry: It’s What Geeks Know!
Elizabeth Taylor and Ivanka Trump may have their own jewelry lines, but it’s geeks like you/us who are the experts in jewelry. Yes, it takes a real geek to know jewelry, cut through the salesperson’s bs, and shop like a pro. Let me show you why.

Norman Guadagno (thinktone) Amazon Archaeology OR Swimming In Our Own Clickstream
Every time we buy from Amazon, we give their algorithms a little more information about ourselves (or at least the things we buy). But, do we have our own algorithms to help us make sense of purchase after purchase across time? What can we learn about ourselves through the things we buy?

Dylan Wilbanks (dylanw) Everyone Core Dumps: Death and Loss For The Geek
We are all going to die. But handling loss is something geeks struggle with. Learn three things you should do when a friend dies, three things you shouldn’t do, and ways you can preserve your existence online.

Greg Dunlap (heyrocker) How to not suck at pinball
Pinball is hard. Luckily, getting better at pinball, not great but respectable, is actually pretty easy.

Jason Carmel (defenestrate99) Defamation and Twitter – A Practical Guide to Covering Your Ass
I will provide a few practical ways that might protect your right as an American to roast the bejeezus out of the asshats of the world, without getting sued into oblivion.

Ron Burk (ronburk) Three Strange Definitions of Computer Programming Legendary computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra once said: “Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.” But if programming is not about the computers, what IS it about?

See you there

We’re excited about Ignite Seattle and we hope to see there. If you are tweeting about the event, use #is8 and if you are taking photos, please add them to our Flickr group and/or Facebook page.

Next Ignite Seattle – December 1st

Summer’s almost over and we’ve packed up the kids and sent them to school, returned from Burning Man, and are gearing up once again for our next Ignite Seattle.

For this fall’s edition, we’re trying something new: planning ahead. We’re opening submissions today for our next Ignite Seattle which will take place on December 1st at the King Cat Theatre. Help us turn over a new leaf by getting your submissions in well before the October 19th deadline.

Submit your talk. We ♥ early submissions.

We look forward to seeing you all on December 1st!