I don’t know if you locals think of it this way: I view your website as a primo place for folks from around the world to go to learn about how Ignites should be done. I’m encouraging body/mind workers to start making these kind of presentations; it’s great to have this set of wonderful examples available.

My main request is to have a page on your website where links to all videos from past Portland Ignites are available. For each video, provide a link to the author’s proposal for that presentation. Would there be a way to display the approximate twitter stream that was flowing when a particular presentation was happening? If the archived presentations are easy to access, the archive will have a greater utility for users that are less technically adept.

Ditto on Barry’s suggestions. If there’s a place to locate the camera so the whole slide can be visible without panning, the would be great.

The page where you can see the proposals is outstanding. It gives both potential presenters and the audience one of the best ways to get engaged in the event beforehand.

What format do you take the slides in for your presentations? Do you have a “no builds/transitions on a slide” rule?

Thanks.

For IP5, I suggest having the videographer positioned more towards center stage, rather than off to one side. After viewing videos of IP4, it was nearly impossible to get a clear view of the screen from such an angle. And isn’t the information on the screen what viewers most want to see?

By being in the center of the venue, the videographer can capture both the speaker and his/her presentation in better detail. Seems like an easy thing to accomplish, even from the back of the theater.

We do enjoy having the videos for future reference, and whatever you can do to make each presentation look its best would be appreciated.

I generally agree with most of the comments above, so it looks like I’ll just need a few diffs at this point:

* Jason Mauer wrote “First, use a wireless mic.” Better yet, have several. With a solid sound tech running them, this would hugely improve the seamlessness of the very quick handoffs, and give some redundancy.

* The late start and long intermission was a real problem for me. I had planned to do something after the event, based on the published schedule. I finally decided to blow the other thing off and watch the rest of Ignite 4, but it was a close call. I think it’s quite important to publish a schedule and then hit it as exactly as possible.

* I’ve said this before privately, but I’ll say it publicly as well: There needs to be a suggested donation for advance tickets, or a bigger venue, or both. Otherwise, ticket distribution becomes a “who’s the most glued to their IM/Twitter” affair, and the venue gets way too packed. I think that it’s great that so many people show up, but it’s definitely on the edge of unpleasant with the size and occupancy of the current venue.

IMHO, if it’s done right, folks can show up a half-hour before showtime and expect to get a decent seat if they have a ticket, or find out immediately whether there will be a seat for them if they do not have a ticket.

In extremis, the seating could be assigned. I’d be happy to write a little seat planner that runs in real time and meets any seating constraints and priorities folks want to mess with. Somebody else would have to write the web interface, though.
* Posting some clear guidelines about what sorts of talks (both topic areas and types of talk) are particularly sought as part of the call for presentations would be great. I have been avoiding proposing any hard tech topics in the past because I assumed from the accepted talks that this sort of thing was not a priority for Ignite…

Again, thanks for a great event.

Thanks to LOT for another great Portland night out!

1. The ticket system was great. Well done.

2. The free food was awesome. Again, well done.

3. Those who showed up early with tickets had to wait a very long time. We waited almost an hour and a half before the talks started, and we weren’t even that early. We were lucky to get a seat with a table in front of it in the back left of the theater.

4. Intermission should be 15 minutes. I had to convince my friends it was worth waiting versus heading home. We ended up watching about an hour of talks but waited for close to two hours total. Everyone in my group agreed we’d gladly attend again if there is less waiting.

5. Some of the speakers were pretty bad and it seemed like they were only there because they have a reputation on twitter. It’d be great if the presentations were first briefly reviewed to weed out the really bad or really unprepared stuff. Nothing too fancy. Perhaps have 2x the presenters do a preview, rank the talks, then let the top half present at ignite.

6. Most everyone I met was really nice. The event drew a great crowd.

I understand that for the sake of the sponsors it makes sense to have some time to network and perhaps head hunt. Please creatively fill the dead time before talks. Perhaps have the crowd play a game or do some geeky web 2.0 stuff like digg bombing the ignite website via few laptops on stage. The projector could show the real time effects of the digg bomb (or whatever is done). Maybe even let the head hunters have a chance to solicit talent — as long as they make it entertaining.

GOOD:
* Spotlight on the speaker was great (Reid?). It was much easier to see the person presenting AND the text on their slides. This was my favorite improvement.

* Great intro from Josh using the Ignite format to prep the audience.

* Fun, entertaining speakers and talks, great job by the selection committee.

* Clever sponsor videos. I was against the idea initially because I wanted sponsors to be on the spot like speakers, but this worked out very well.

* General admission line let everyone that showed up without a ticket in. Great!

NEEDS IMPROVEMENT:
* The booing at Microsoft was embarrassing. I was one of those cheered and yelled “Come on folks, they’re sponsoring this event!”. Maybe the audience needs a quick prep talk before the sponsors videos are shown to remind them whose footing the bill for this free event and explain appropriate behavior.

* The anti-Fox news rant by Abraham Hyatt was inappropriate. Ignite shouldn’t be a place to push partisan agendas and it’s also unfair to have only one side represented. Maybe speakers proposing touchy topics should be quizzed more thoroughly to find out what they’re actually going to say.

* The lines for food and beer sucked. Maybe the venue should be told that we’re going to have lots of people and that they’ll make more money if they have enough staff to serve people, because otherwise, attendees will make fewer trips to the concession stand or begin smuggling in their own perishables.

* Sponsor videos without any video, audio or text sucked. Maybe tell those folks they’ll come off as dorks if they do this, and offer to just record a quick voice-over spiel over the phone with them as a fallback.

* No after parties pre-announced. However, we put together two of them at Imbibe and Space Room during the event, and the Imbibe one that I went to was fun.

* Reservation system needed a waiting list, which would have been preferable to encouraging people to keep hitting the system in hopes that a ticket is available. I’ll try to add that for IP5.

NON-ISSUES:
* Starting late was fine. Many people were in line for food and beer, and having a late start let these folks actually see the beginning of the talks.

* Intermission length was fine. I enjoyed chatting with my fellow audience members.

* “No advertising enforced”. I thought this was fine because these were speakers telling the audience how to learn more about them after the show. I don’t recall any blatant sales pitches.

UNCERTAIN:
* Desire for more tech talks. Portland-area user groups have used something similar to the Ignite format successfully. However, giving proper tech talks at Ignite will likely bore the audience, so any tech talk would have to keep it fairly high-level. We can also do Ignite style talks at the tech social events, BarCamp and such.

- Shorter intermission.
After waiting a half hour in line and then another 20 minutes for the show to start late, it was a long 1/2 hour before the second half began. We had just started to get into the talks when intermission hit. At least 500 of us were there on schedule so yes, please start on time!

- We liked the overall event, the location, the bright screen, and the whole concept. Thanks!

I think the sponsors can be more creative in their pitches. I thought the LOT and the video ?Extensis efforts were good - if you are a creative company, present like one!

It’s your event, and you can’t argue with success though…

I’ll add to the chorus of starting the event on time. It will encourage people to show up early, get their beers, and sit down so they don’t miss anything.

The sponsor videos were fun. Though, I agree with Aaron that the booing of Microsoft was a low point of the evening. Obviously, you can’t control how an audience will react, but I could see that turning off potential sponsors. Be nice people!

On the lack of tech topics, I wonder if that’s because we are in that community and see this as an opportunity to show another side of ourselves in addition to having time to do some face-to-face networking. I also wonder if people who may want to submit tech-focused proposals feel discouraged that it won’t be as well-received over a presentation that generates a lot of response from the audience.

Also, I was under the impression that all the talks were supposed to be about something tech? Many of them weren’t so they felt a bit out of place.