communitech

 

“Enlighten us. But make it quick.”

 

An Ignite event is like a particle accelerator for ideas: a staccato, mildly manic, and openly geeky evening of short talks on a hodgepodge of subjects.

 

Waterloo held its second Ignite event on Wednesday, March 3 in front of an overflowing crowd at the Children’s Museum.

 

Here’s a recap for those who couldn’t be there.

 

How Ignite works

The format is simple: a set number of speakers each give a 5-minute presentation. Behind them, a projector automatically advances 20 slides, each lasting for 15 seconds.

 

Starting off with a Bang: The Evolution of Sex

 

In all, 16 speakers gave impassioned presentations, perhaps none on a more passionate topic than Angela Pause.

 

She compared genital size in primates, noting that the fidelity of the female of each species was the determining factor for male size. The more loyal (or captive) the female, the smaller the genitals.

 

“Tiger Woods slammed within the first 10 slides at #ignitewaterloo” @mikepgww

 

Human males, in case you’re wondering, are somewhere in the middle of the six primate species.

 

Communities, Cliques, and Scenes

 

Next up was Vince Jelenic, an antiques dealer with a passion for help local small business communities connect with their customers online. He talked about both the advantages and difficulties of maintaining such communities.

 

“Vince Jelenic wants to sell antiques to the whole galaxy. Are Martians more partial to Louis XIV or Mission style pieces? @melle

 

Myth-Conceptions of Dubai and Abu Dhabi

 

Renjie Butalid’s fine presentation on the rapid and transformative pace of change in the UAE contrasted Disney’s cultural typecasting with images of a landscape crowded with cranes – not camels.

 

Staying Sincere Online (Lisa Farlow)

 

When Lisa described personal bloggers as the “most sincere on the planet”, the 20-somethings in the audience nodded, and the 30-somethings raised their Gen X eyebrows.

 

But Lisa’s introduction to her 11,000-member 20something community was nonetheless a good demonstration of how online communities foster offline friendships that go beyond the pale.

 

How to Solve an Accordion in 45 Seconds

 

Co-host’s Alex Matan’s talk was nod to “How to solve a Rubik’s in 90 seconds”, a presentation from the first Ignite! Waterloo. Alex had the audience howling. His walkthrough of accordion basics was interactive, hilarious, and replete with references to BlackBerry, and the apocalypse. A must-see when the Ignite! videos are released.

 

Accordions! Roundabouts! Oh my! @kylemackie

 

In a Roundabout Way

 

Erica Waugh’s passion for roundabouts shaped a thorough and informative talk. From landscaping to safety to design, she championed the virtues and varieties of these environmentally friendly traffic exchanges. The audience (this roundabout-impaired author in particular) was happily brought up to speed.

 

How to change a politician’s mind

 

“Keep it local. Keep it personal. Find a connection. Demonstrate value. Collaborate. Follow up.” Jeff Henry’s talk was an attack on political apathy and a primer for getting involved in the political process.

 

The Ignite audience was full of specialists, Jeff said, and they are exactly the people politicians need to help them make decisions.

 

“Politicians are like children. They like stories” – Jeff Henry.

 

Why Conferences Suck

 

The combination of unproductive conferences and a background in educational technology lead @KyleMackie to the blunt title of his talk.

 

Conferences do a lousy job at capturing the interests, intent and conversations of attendees, he argued, and outlined a number of solutions where technology could be applied before, during and after people were brought together.

 

#IgniteWaterloo. – the acordion testicle traffic circle community blog conference conference. If something is missing we are only halfway. @WWFSMD

 

Tom Skazinski – Zoom out and Emerge

 

Tom spoke about his intriguing workin creating computer models that attempt to emulate social change by studying and replicating the recursive models of trial-and-error genome evolution found in nature. He pointed out that anything was possible through recombination — the difficulty was in ‘zooming out’ to equip the computer model with the correct parameters.

 

Lego my Lego!

 

There’s also a creative component to each and every Ignite event. Waterloo 2 offered a Lego contest. Using bins of loose Lego borrowed from The Toy Building Zone, attendees were invited to build and submit their creations, with a prize (donated by Communitech) to the winner.

 

Hilary Abel – Blogging 101

 

‘Stop overthinking and get blogging’ was the main thrust of this presentation, remarkable for the audience participation in a group ‘wolf howl’ near its close. A natural public speaker, Hilary looked at celebrity bloggers, online memes and exhorted the audience to not only start blogging, but keep at it.

 

Sunshine Chen – Stories on Storytelling

 

The aptly named Sunshine illuminated his passion for how the historical narratives of people, their economies and their environments tell stories that architects should listen to – as should everyone – because they connect us to our own personal stories. Easily the shortest 5-minute presentation of the evening. If Sunshine wrote a self-help book, I’d buy it.

 

Ramy Nasser – A Reverse History of Engineering pranks

 

Ramy followed a presentation on the stories of buildings with stories of people who put cars on them. From hanging VW Beetles from bridges to hacked billboards to rogue Bryan Adams elephants and bonzai kittens, Ramy looked at the culture of engineering pranks with a twinkle in his eye.

 

The next Ignite Waterloo event is in July, stay tuned

Schien Dong – The Advertisers Dilemma

 

How do you sell the benefits of a car when everyone is still riding horses? Schien used this argument and others to frame the challenge of advertising, marketing and product development for startups. A greatly simplified version of his answer was that startups should act like distributers, translating value from product to benefit while adjusting the message as the market matures.

 

Peter Huang – Geek Music

 

Peter’s fascinating talk danced around the topic of electronic music. “One of the only genres of entertainment that embraces the Internet in totality”. A label-signed DJ, Peter highlighted the democratic and meritocratic aspects of this D-I-Y art form, its subgenres and the primordial bass heartbeat that unites both artist and listener. Peter’s earnest and honest talk made you want to start mixing right away.

 

 

Brenton Lowler – Geocaching

 

Brenton managed to have both the worst luck and best performance of the evening. With most of his slides inexplicably missing images, Brenton ad libbed and ad hoc’ed his way through a presention on the rising popularity of Geocaching. With the crowd cheering and clapping their support, Brenton talked about the 1 million+ caches waiting to be found by high-tech treasure hunters.

 

I think Ramy got too excited about his pranking presentation and punked the geocaching slides. @josephfung

 

Lessons Learned From Flying

 

Fittingly, Brendon’s presentation was followed by the metered, zen-like approach of Kareem Shehata. He shared the philosophical lessons that piloting small aircraft have taught him. Among the gems of this fine talk where his ‘rule of threes’.

 

For Kareem, three small, unconnected issues are a better harbinger of serious trouble than one ‘big’ issue. But when catastrophe does strike, he said, it’s time to be a duck: “calm on the surface and paddling like hell underneath”.

 

More information, reviews and images (and video, soon) are available on the Ignite Waterloo web site.