Ignite Waterloo

Registration now open for Ignite Waterloo 2

Mark Connolly — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 13:48:04 +0000

Plans are progressing nicely for our first event of 2010. As previously announced, it’s on Wednesday March 3 at the Children’s Museum in Kitchener. We’re close to finalizing the list of speakers and topics for their talks. Just to whet your appetites, here’s an initial list of 8 out of 16 speakers. More details to come!

Renjie Butalid — Myth-conceptions of Dubai and Abu Dhabi
Sunshine Chen — Fort Mac and The ‘Loo… A Tale of Two Cities
Peter Huang — Geek Music
Vince Jelenic — Community, Cliques & Scenes
Angela Pause — The Evolution of Sex
Cahill Puil — Micro-Finance
Tom Skazinski — Computing project that advocates a paradigm shift in social change.
Erica Waugh — In a Roundabout Way

Registration is now open. Sign up and join the fun.

Update: While the exact times are still being determined, the schedule will be similar to our first event.

Second Ignite Waterloo event is on for March 3!

Mark Connolly — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 02:47:10 +0000

It’s been a little quite here in recent weeks, certainly in comparison to the activity around our first event. The cone of silence is now coming off, though, and we’re pleased to announce that Ignite Waterloo #2 is happening on March 3. Once again, it will be at The Children’s Museum in Kitchener. Details on speakers, registration, and other meaningful news will emerge soon, but for now mark that date in your calendar and let people know that we’ll be back soon!

Update: I should have mentioned that our local event is part of Global Ignite Week, which includes Ignite events around the world. How cool is that?

Videos from our first event now available

Mark Connolly — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:40:46 +0000

Thanks to Philip Bast, we now have a video record of the 16 talks given at our first IgniteWaterloo event. Have a look at our spiffy new Vimeo site and dig into the videos. The talks are every bit as engaging and edifying on video as they were that night at the Children’s museum. And get this — the videos are collected together into an album!

“Enlighten us … but do it quickly”

David Yoon — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:29:56 +0000

Videographer Philip Bast was on hand for Ignite Waterloo’s inaugural event. Graciously donating his time, Philip captured the evenings presentations and is working on compiling them for us. Here’s the first of his video snapshots, also featured on The Record.com Video Reports under Geek Culture.

Ignite Waterloo #2 is coming your way

Mark Connolly — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 02:00:07 +0000

Some of the Ignite organizers got together for a lunch meeting today to talk about the first event last week and to begin planning for the second event, tentatively set for March 2010. The general feeling is that, minor glitches aside, the first event worked quite well.

But others may have a different take.

Were you at our first event? If so, what did you think? What did you like? What might you want to see done differently? Please let us know by leaving a comment for this post.

Here’s the way it went down

Mark Connolly — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:50:03 +0000

Artifacts from the first Ignite Waterloo event are starting to appear around the web. This one is our official record of last Wednesday’s evening of fun.

Ignite Waterloo Event #1 (November 25, 2009)

6:00pm Doors open

6:45pm The cupcake decorating contest begins

8:00pm Ignite talks (round 1, 8 speakers)

Jesse Rodgers: How to run an ‘unconference’
Jayne Thompson: Flood Forecasting and Climate Change
Aden Seaman: How to Solve a Rubik’s Cube in 90 seconds
Brent Curry: Nudging people onto bikes in the age of the automobile
David Swart: What do you do with visible spheres?
Darin White: Meta-Making: A hacker space in 17 easy steps
Jaclyn Konzelmann: Teaching hasn’t changed. Is it still effective?
Kevin Thaler: Policing in 2009: Five minutes on twenty years of change

8:45pm Intermission (chat, get refreshed, etc.)

9:00pm Ignite talks (round 2, 8 speakers)

David Estil: Here Comes the Sun: Solar Energy as development home and abroad
Simon Clark: Hacking the Hood
Jason Shim: ‘Til Disconnection Do We Part: A Second Life Wedding
Levi McCulloch: A Real Fraternity Road Trip
Mark Connolly: Are you sure that’s an album? Metaphor in product design
Dr. Matt Renaud: High Altitude Medicine
Nick Oddson: How Theatre Helped My Career: Improvisational guidelines for work and life
John Fishbein: Meet the Real Africa

10:00pm Announce cupcake decorating contest winner (Kevin, for his superb trompe l’oile hamburger), and wrap up

11:00pm No, really! We’re done now! Time to go home!

Update (2009-11-29): I was quite remiss in not again thanking our sponsors for supporting this first event. Here’s a big thanks to Schlueter Cheverolet Hummer, who came on board first; Philip Bast; and Communitech.

Slides, pictures, tweets, and more

Mark Connolly — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:48:44 +0000

Artifacts are popping up around the web documenting our first event last Wednesday. Here are a few you can check out.

Update (2009-11-29): Renjie Butalid has created a spectacularly cool video summary of the event. It’s embedded here:

Ignite Waterloo from Renjie Butalid on Vimeo.

A complete slide deck is available. It’s embedded here:

Ignite! Waterloo

View more documents from Ignite Waterloo.

A set of photos is available here, and likely elsewhere on the web as well. There’s a Flickr photo group, though it’s empty as I write this. If you attended and have some pictures, be sure to add them.

There’s a twitter stream. It may drift off over time, but as I write this it provides fine coverage of the first event.

Here are a few nice write-ups. Again, there are likely others out there.

Great coverage on the Red Canary site
Communitech sponsored the event, and Thom Ryan wrote a blog post about it
A summary on The Flying Squirrel (Darcy Casselman’s blog)
A write up in a sketchbook, from b.p.
Darin White’s report on his experience as a speaker and attendee
Wendy Hood-Morris gives us a peak into the thoughts of a cupcake decorating contest judge
A summary at Slideaway Media
Read about the event in general and the cupcakes in particular at the readqatalyst blog
A brief post on my own blog

That certainly worked out well

Mark Connolly — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 02:23:44 +0000

Well, it feels safe to say that the first event was a great success by just about any measure. We had a full slate of 16 speakers (two of whom were last minute substitutions), we had a great crowd, and we had had plenty of cupcakes decorated. The Children’s Museum was pretty much the perfect venue. The crowd was generous and supportive, and everyone seemed to have a great time.

Ignite Waterloo hit this first event out of the metaphorical ballpark. On behalf of everyone behind Ignite Waterloo, thanks to all the folks who came out to watch, to participate, to facilitate, and to otherwise help build this new pocket of community in Waterloo Region.

We’ll get some documentation up soon. In the meantime, enjoy these photos of the evening’s activities.

This is just the beginning. Stay tuned!

More tickets for Ignite Waterloo

Mark Connolly — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:55:56 +0000

We have good news on the ticket front as we approach our very first Ignite Waterloo event this Wednesday.

We’ve been able to configure seating at the Children’s Museum such that we can now handle 150 people at Wednesday’s event, rather than 120. That means that if you were on the waiting list, you should now have a ticket! If you weren’t on the list, you can still sign up and possibly get a ticket. Finally, there’s still the option of showing up on Wednesday and getting in line — we’ll let admit folks without tickets starting at 7:00pm if there’s room.

A related message for ticket holders is to make sure you arrive before 7:00pm if you want guaranteed entry.

It looks like we should have a great first event. The slides have all been delivered, and our speakers have been busy rehearsing and otherwise preparing for their talks.

And then there’s the cupcakes…

Registration is open for our first event!

Mark Connolly — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:04:06 +0000

Registration is now open for our first event on November 25. From exploring community, through solving Rubik’s cube, through solar energy, there’s a great variety of topics to be enjoyed. There’s even a cupcake decorating contest if the talks don’t grab you. Space is limited, though, so be sure to sign up soon if you hope to attend.