ignite6 – Ignite Seattle

Ron Burk on The Psychology of Incompetence

Here’s a great talk from the last Ignite to warm you up for tonight’s Ignite 7 event.

Why does software suck so bad? Is it possible that a lot of us really smart computer programmers are, in fact… incompetent? Ron Burk, with his wry style, asks the hard questions about hiring, firing and working with incompetence in the software industry in this talk that went viral on YouTube.

About Ron Burk

Ron is the former editor of Windows Developer’s Journal and author of the upcoming book “The Pop Psychology of Programming.” You can find Ron Burk on his blog.

The Coolness of Telemedicine – Chris DiBona

We grew up watching medical droids, tricorders and stasis chambers as mainstays in futuristic medicine but it wasn’t that long ago that bionics, the hypospray and telemedicine were also merely science fiction. While there aren’t many open APIs or much rapid product development, the IT revolution hasn’t left the medical industry behind completely.

Chris DiBona takes us on a tour of the near future with his visit to the annual American Telemedicine Association Exposition and talks about the state of IT in the latest medical gear.

About Chris DiBona

Chris DiBona is the Open Source Programs Manager for Google, which includes running the Summer of Code, releasing open source software on Google’s Code website and contributing to several og Google’s blogs. He also helps plan the annual Sci Foo Camp with Tim O’Reilly and Nature’s Timo Hannay.

You can find Chris writing on his personal blog, Egofood or on Twitter @Cdibona in his spare time (spare time?).

Intangible Method (a digital fairy tale) – Scotto Moore

Scotto Moore takes us into a digital fairy tale about a young woman who realizes that first person video footage from her own life is being posted to YouTube – before the events actually occur in real life.

Surreal fantasy or could it really happen? You’ll not want to miss this gem from one of Ignite Seattle’s recurring cast of characters.

About Scotto Moore

You can find Scotto Moore on his Web site at scotto.org.

The Invention of the Wheel – Mike Tyka

It seems Nature has beaten man to almost every “invention” : Helicopters, Submarines, Electricity, Video Cameras, Supercomputers, etc. For the longest time Mike Tyka thought the one notable exception was the wheel. Recent discoveries in biochemistry proved this to be false as well.

Nature has invented a full blown, reversible, proton driven turbine engine, many tens of thousands of which churn away in every one of the billions of cells in a human body. Join Mike Tyka as he takes you on a journey of discovery inside your body and the wheels that make you tick.

About Mike Tyka

Dr. Michael Tyka is a senior fellow at The Baker Laboratory at the University of Washington’s Biochemistry department.

Decoding Sticks and Waves – Ken Beegle

Yesterday’s breakthrough solutions are today’s historical curiosities. Such is the case of stick charts, which were once used to navigate the Marshall Islands.

By observing the waves, wind and stars, select Marshall Islanders were able to find their way across the water. In 1898, Captain Winkler of the German Navy began decoding the stick charts, allowing us to understand how and why the charts worked.

Using his experiences as a lens, Ken Beegle asks us to look at what we’re building today and ask what type of historical curiosities they will become.

About Ken Beegle

You can find Ken on Twitter at @kbeegle, at his Web site, and the slides from this presentation at Slideshare.

Geek Girl: A Life Story – Maya Bisineer

Eye shadow and code don’t mix? Despite a sea change of attitudes and an influx of women in the male dominated field of technology, issues of inequality and discrimination remain.

Through humor and anecdote, Maya Bisineer’s Ignite talk shows you how to create role models that will foster the next generation of geek girls. She encourages people to think hard and respond differently to gender issues – be it with respect to introducing math to little girls or being more accepting of the tech women in their lives.

Maya’s talk mixes her own life story with tips about how to meet or be a geek girl and shows that yes, eye shadow and code can and do mix.

About Maya Bisineer

Maya Bisineer is the founder of Memetales, a site created to “democratize creation, sharing and marketing of children’s picture books.” She also serves as the Director of Education for the Social Media Club Seattle.

You can find Maya at ThinkMaya on Twitter, on her blog and she is a regular contributor to the SimpleMom blog.

Public Library Hacking – Dawn Rutherford

Money tight? Want to save more for a rainy day? If you aren’t fully utilizing your public library, you might be wasting thousands of dollars a year! Learn how to get share books, DVDs, CDs, magazines, articles, audiobooks, and much more…without overloading your budget or your storage space.

Librarian Dawn Rutherford will give you a quick trip through all that your public libraries have to offer, and how to make the most of it, using tricks and tips gleaned from someone who has spent over half her life working or volunteering in them.

About Dawn Rutherford

Dawn is the Teen Services Coordinator for Sno-Isle Libraries. You can also find Dawn on her blog.

Knitting in Code – Beth Goza

Remember the joy of writing your first Hello World application? Do you still have a copy somewhere so you can gaze upon your coded baby steps into the world of binary goodness? In knitting, creating something beautiful is just like binary, with a series of knits and pearls you can dream up the most sophisticated of patterns.

In the spirit of hi-tech meets hand-tech, Beth Goza will show you how to convert your binary Hello World app into a pattern of stitches (think knit =1 purl = 0), so that you can create, mount, frame and hang your Hello World genius for all to see.

About Beth Goza

You can find Beth at bethgo on Twitter, on her blog. During the day, Beth works at T-Mobile on the devPartner Community team.

Beth also gave the “Is 2008 the year the “Third Screen” Takes Center Stage?” Ignite talk in August of 2007 and she will be speaking at the 2009 Gnomedex.

How and Why to Give an Ignite Talk – Scott Berkun

Editor’s Note – this post is completely ripped off of Brady’s post on the Ignite main site.

Scott Berkun is a great public speaker. He travels the country speaking on project management, innovation, design and lately on how to speak. As an offshoot in his research on his upcoming book he put together this Ignite talk on Why and How to Speak.

He’s summarized the talk in this excellent blog post on Speaker Confessions (where he’s chronicling his new book):

300 seconds kicks ass. This is super short, which means it’s easy to practice . There is no excuse for not practicing until it feels good. It also means you have to be tight in your points. 300 seconds equals 10 television commercials. You can make great points in a short time if you refine your thoughts. The entire sermon on the mount can be read in about 5 minutes and The Gettysburg address takes about 2 and a half minutes.
Figure out your points before you make slides. Talking about something for five minutes is easy – really, give it a shot once or twice before you make a slide – it will help you sort out what you want to say. You only need Four or five solid points to go 5 minutes. And practice with a timer before you make a slide. You’ll quickly discover how unlikely it is to run out of things to say during an ignite talk.

It is ok to breathe. There is no law that says you must fill every second with talking. When you practice, practice breathing. Take a moment between points. Like whitespace in visual design it’s the pauses that make what you do say stand out clearly. Give yourself a slide or two that’s for just for catching up and taking a breath.

Pick strong stories and big themes. What do you love? What do you hate? What is the best advice anyone ever gave you? Pick stories with big themes, since they require less introduction. What are the 5 most important things to know about X that no one talks about? The stronger the topic & title the easier the work is. Top 10 lists can work, but making 10 points is extremely hard – aim for 5 or 6.

He’s got several more points at his site.

How to Break Up With Someone On Twitter – Jason Preston

Expressing one’s self on Twitter involves summarizing, editing, and jettisoning the unimportant. We need to strip our thoughts down to the bare minimum, while most importantly, retaining the meaning.

For the more verbose of us, Twitter’s 140 character limit poses a challenge for conveying something as simple as where you are and what you are doing. But what about communicating something much more complex, like breaking up with someone?

Jason Preston navigates you through the world of minimizing the complex feelings, thoughts and action items associated with breaking up with someone in less than 140 characters.

In this instructive how-to video, you’ll build your Twitter toolbox with the following editing tactics:

Acronymisying
Pictifying
Thesaurizing
Clppng

and if necessary, you can gain the ability to break up with someone on Twitter.

About Jason Preston

Jason Preston is currently the Director of New Media at Parnassus Group, the company responsible for the 140 | The Twitter Conference.

You can find Jason at Jasonp107 on Twitter, on his blog or his thoughts about the future of publishing at Eat, Sleep, Publish. Jason was recently interviewed by Scott Berkun about this talk here.