Top of this document
Go directly to navigation
Go directly to page content

« Photos from PICNIC '09 PICNIC news & blog PICNIC '09 Conference... »

Ignite@PICNIC: A Series of Five-Minute Talks

On day 3 of PICNIC '09 Ignite founder Brady Forrest moderated eight Ignite talks in one hour. Forrest began by reassuring the audience, “Ignite talks are short enough that if you don’t like the topic - or if the speaker is horrible - the rule is that in five minutes it’s over and we move on.” While Ignite topics can cover any topic (from winning at Scrabble to the history of Cup O’ Noodles) the presenters at Picnic09 spoke mostly about topics related to technology and business: from Dave McLure’s talk “Startup 2.0”, to Syed Rayhan’s “East Meets West at Work” and Benjamin Joffe’s “Techno Darwinism”.

with:

It would be difficult to say that each of the eight topics captivated the audience’s attention equally, but after only one hour it was impressive that we had just met eight new people, learned about eight different topics, and more importantly had some fun doing it.

Eric Diep was the only speaker who thought five minutes was too long. The audience laughed along as he quickly outraced the projector filling in with, “Wow…these slides are slow.” Diep’s ability to speed ahead was due to his concise choice of words and his ability to speak clearly – a recipe for success at Ignite. Diep concluded his talk on the social web, “The social web should be thought of as a social game. And therefore, people creating web applications should think more like game developers, instead of thinking only like web developers.”

Speaking with Forrest after the presentations I asked, “Is there an Ignite talk about how to give an Ignite talk?” He enthusiastically replied, “Yes!”, referring me to Scott Berkun’s fantastic talk from earlier this summer. During this video Berkun encourages “everyone to speak at Ignite” because “everyone has a story, and everyone should practice telling that story.”

Check out the video archive on the Ignite website as well as some tips on how to tell your five minute story.

PICNIC '09 Ignite Line-up

1. Dave McClure - Startup 2.0

2. Brady Forrest - Desert City As an Incubator (Burning Man)

3. Syed Rayhan - East Meets West at Work

4. Zameer Razack - Musical Thinking: Designing New Media from Musical Perspectives

5. Frits Hoff - EU Version of OLPC

6. Eric Diep - Building Social Apps for the Web

7. Ariella Sutter - Conscious Childbirth

8. Benjamin Joffe - Techno Darwinism

Ignite: a presentation style where speakers are given only five-minutes to deliver their story, insight or idea. Each speaker gets 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds. Ignite was started in Seattle in 2006 by O’Reilly’s Brady Forrest and Bre Petti, and since then hundreds of Ignite talks have been given around the world. For more info on Ignite visit ignite.oreilly.com