Ignite captures the best of geek culture in a series of five-minute speed presentations on topics ranging from The Best Way to Buy a Car to Hacking Chocolate. Imagine that you're on stage in front of an audience of hundreds of people, doing a five-minute presentation using a slide deck that auto-forwards every 15 seconds, whether you're ready or not. What would you do? What would you say? Could you stand the pressure? Every week, find out how some of the smartest minds on the planet dealt with this situation as your host, Brady Forrest, highlights a different talk from Ignites around the world.
Much is made about how the news industry has to change because of the internet. Not as much is said about the other side of the coin: how we, the consumers, can change. Monica Guzman (@moniguzman), a reporter for the Seattle PI, talks about what it's like to be a journalist now.
Monica is the founding reporter for the Big Blog and in many ways has been the PI's leading online persona. She's had a couple of years to figure out how online readers can add or detract from the news experience and she shares that in her talk.
This week's Ignite episode starts with the simple premise that you are going to boil water. However we're going to attempt it via our own nuclear reactor. Using just 20 slides nuclear engineer Vanessa Holfeltz walks us through the steps of building our very own.
The steps are:
1) Get some uranium. Don't worry you can get that from the dirt in your backyard.
2) Enrich that uranium. The catch is that most of that Uranium is U238 and you have to sperate it fro the more valuable U235. It's hard and expensive to do -- after all Uranium 235 only weighs 3 neutrons more.
3) Make fuel pellets from the Uranium. You do this with lots and lots of Uranium 235.
4) Build a nuclear power reactor. If you don't already have your own you should expect some red tape.
5) Fission. You fire neutrons at the Uranium 235 and that ultimately generates heat.
Result: Heat to boil water
Bonus Step: Use the steam to power your home.
You can learn more on HowStuffWorks and Wikipedia. Thanks to Chris, Ponzi and Gnomedex for the video footage.
The format of Ignite is 20 slides that auto-advance after 15 seconds. When you are on stage giving an Ignite talk this can be quite exhilarating (sometimes terrifying). The added adrenalin really adds to the presentation and I think that will come through on the small screen.
Ignite has spread to over 20 cities in the past two years. We want to highlight speakers from around the world with the show. If your town or city has lots of geeks throw an Ignite to bring them together!
In the 1800s cities used pneumatic tubes to transfer physical documents. Of course with the internet we no longer need these long tunnels, but that doesn't mean that they aren't fun to learn about how these old systems are similar to the internet. Molly Wright Steenson gave a great talk about how these systems worked and what was state of the art in the 1800's.
The format of Ignite is 20 slides that auto-advance after 15 seconds. When you are on stage giving an Ignite talk this can be quite exhilarating (sometimes terrifying). The added adrenalin really adds to the presentation and I think that will come through on the small screen.
Ignite has spread to over 20 cities in the past two years. We want to highlight speakers from around the world with the show. If your town or city has lots of geeks throw an Ignite to bring them together!
Dr. Jayson Falkner explains the latest in DNA Science, how its effected human evolution and what it's doing to our society. The title is a tribute to the classic XKCD cartoon "Science! It Works....".
The format of Ignite is 20 slides that auto-advance after 15 seconds. When you are on stage giving an Ignite talk this can be quite exhilarating (sometimes terrifying). The added adrenalin really adds to the presentation and I think that will come through on the small screen.
Ignite has spread to over 20 cities in the past two years. We want to highlight speakers from around the world with the show. If your town or city has lots of geeks throw an Ignite to bring them together!
Amber Case is a Cyber Anthropologist and studies how tech is changing our lives. In just five minutes, she runs through her research on the ever-expanding population of cyborgs.
The format of Ignite is 20 slides that auto-advance after 15 seconds. When you are on stage giving an Ignite talk this can be quite exhilarating (sometimes terrifying). The added adrenalin really adds to the presentation and I think that will come through on the small screen.
Ignite has spread to over 20 cities in the past two years. We want to highlight speakers from around the world with the show. If your town or city has lots of geeks throw an Ignite to bring them together!
This week's Ignite Show features Andrew Schneider, a performance artist, and his DIY experimental performance devices, but first a cupcake decorating contest. The cupcake decorating contest and Andrew's talk were filmed at Ignite NYC II.
The format of Ignite is 20 slides that auto-advance after 15 seconds. When you are on stage giving an Ignite talk this can be quite exhilarating (sometimes terrifying). The added adrenalin really adds to the presentation and I think that will come through on the small screen.
Ignite has spread to over 20 cities in the past two years. We want to highlight speakers from around the world with the show. If your town or city has lots of geeks throw an Ignite to bring them together!
This week's Ignite Show features Rob Gruhl. Rob loves to buy cars, but more than that he loves to bargain for cars. He shares his secrets today. This talk was filmed at Ignite Seattle III.
The format of Ignite is 20 slides that auto-advance after 15 seconds. When you are on stage giving an Ignite talk this can be quite exhilarating (sometimes terrifying). The added adrenalin really adds to the presentation and I think that will come through on the small screen.
Ignite has spread to over 20 cities in the past two years. We want to highlight speakers from around the world with the show. If your town or city has lots of geeks throw an Ignite to bring them together!
Today we are releasing "Botanicalls: Homegrown Terra-rists" the second episode of the Ignite Show. This week's speaker is Kati London, the co-creator of Botanicalls, a device that will let you know when your plant needs watering via Twitter. Kati doesn't spend much time explaining Botanicalls instead she talks about some fun(ny) uses for it.
The format of Ignite is 20 slides that auto-advance after 15 seconds. When you are on stage giving an Ignite talk this can be quite exhilarating (sometimes terrifying). The added adrenalin really adds to the presentation and I think that will come through on the small screen.
Ignite has spread to over 20 cities in the past two years. We want to highlight speakers from around the world with the show. If your town or city has lots of geeks throw an Ignite to bring them together!
Today we are launching the first episode of the Ignite Show. The Ignite Show will feature a different speaker each week. This week's speaker is Jason Grigsby doing a talk that was originally performed at Ignite Portland. Jason takes fun look at how Cup Noodle was created and how the team had to embrace constraints and new ideas to create this new food.
Ignite has spread to over 20 cities in the past two years. The third Ignite Boulder happened last night. The fifth Ignite Portland will happen tonight and New York's third is on Monday. We want to highlight speakers from around the world with the show. If your town or city has lots of geeks throw an Ignite to bring them together!
The format of Ignite is 20 slides that auto-advance after 15 seconds. When you are on stage giving an Ignite talk this can be quite exhilarating (sometimes terrifying). The added adrenalin really adds to the presentation and I think that will come through on the small screen.
Thanks to Ignite Organizers, sponsors and attendees from around the world for making this show possible. Thanks to Social Animal for editing the show, Bre Pettis for co-hosting the first episode (and starting Ignite with me), and Sam Valenti of Ghostly Records for letting us use Michna's Swiss Glide. Thanks to everyone at O'Reilly who has supported Ignite through the years especially Mary, Jennifer, Laura A., Laura P., Cali, Roberta, Mike, pt, Sara, Laura B and Tim.
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