Things that made the event less than totally thrilling and possible solutions:
1) Not enough seating. Only let in as many people as you have seats in the house.
2) Tickets sold out in like 5 minutes. Charge money for tickets. Not a lot, but just enough to slow it down and reduce the number of sponsors needed. Alternately, limit the number of tickets you can get without a sponsorship to like 2-4. You offer free food (obviously just for those with tickets who can get in before it’s gone), so you might also have grounds to keep GA free even if you charge for advance tickets. Kicking the freeloaders up to the balcony works to make an incentive to buy tickets.
3) Sitting around in the theater for 1-2 hours before the show is NOT COOL, not improved by waiting in line beforehand. Doors should never open more than one hour before starting for any reason.
4) The sponsor reel was what, 30 minutes long? Ads are not actual content, however much you like the people behind them. I’m all for supporting local tech businesses, but I seriously wanted to claw my eyes out with a rake. Limit the number of sponsors, and perhaps raise the sponsorship cost accordingly. Mix the 15 seconds of flame with the bigger ads, and show them during all seating and intermission and exiting. Thus, no endless ad reel tacked on to a lengthy intermission. No more splash screens with totally random stock photography.
5) Tech problems blah blah blah
6) Speakers need to be able to easily see when their slide has changed. I wasn’t counting seconds, but are the slides changed on a consistent schedule? Seemed inconsistent to me, but that might be the speakers not really reading their presentations with their slides auto-changing beforehand.
7) More speaker guidelines are needed, perhaps. Turning away from the audience and reading your slides into the microphone would not get you a good grade in any community college speech class in the nation, and it shouldn’t be done at Ignite AT ALL. It’s nice to be low-pressure and all that, but we’re talking about 700 people here. There is GONNA be pressure, and the right way to deal is to be prepared and professional. Do more rehearsals together, so you can better hone your technique and improve the actual presentations. A week’s evenings commitment from the speakers isn’t really too much to ask I hope…
If there was less wasted time you could have more speakers…

Anyway, not trying to harsh your high, just hoping you take it in the spirit it’s given, which is to say snarky with love.

- Great job organizers. Excellent use of the venue and great job keeping everything going along.

- I’m not sure that there is a good way to improve the ticketing strategy. The on-line system works great, but the unfortunately the venue runs out of space fast.

- As a speaker I found the monitor and screen (blank) in front almost completely useless. That said, I didn’t plan to rely on them anyhow. It is a short and casual talk with a forgiving crowd. I don’t see an urgent need to improve the speaker’s setup.

- My friends were able to show up just before 6pm and snag a table and five seats on the lower level. Everyone had a blast.

- Awesome job with the live video cast and putting the video on-line so quickly! Please keep this up for future Ignite talks.

It’d be great if somehow the Bagdad could seat 1,000 more people! I’m looking forward to seeing Ignite#6.

Considering the difficulty of the event, I would give high marks to the Legion of Tech for putting on the show. Despite the glitches, I think the team did a great job.

For the presenter who had technical difficulties, I would offer to allow him to perform his address at Ignite6.

The only other critique is that there are far too many ads during the show. I know this sounds crazy coming from an ad guy but I really think it drains the show of its punch.

All in all, however, it was a great production! Thanks again.

As for the ticketing and seating issues, you could make the balcony a general admission section with the main floor reserved for ticket holders only. Ushers stationed at the main floor doors could check for tickets. Or, ticket holders could get a special hand stamp when they enter the building and the stamp could be checked at the doors to the main floor.

Looking forward to IP 6!

NEEDS IMPROVEMENT
- Paid food/drink lines: Too long. Tell venue to get more servers so we can buy more stuff.
- Presenter computer: Let speaker see their own slides so they don’t need to turn around and watch the big screen.
- Display computer: Provide spare machine in case of technical problems.
- Intervention: If there’s a problem, stop the show and fix it, rather than punishing the speaker.
- Sponsor videos intro: Announce “and now a word from our sponsors” before showing videos, rather than rolling them without audio or notice.
- 15 seconds of flame: I didn’t see or hear these because they were played with the house lights on and the audio muted.
- After party: Thanks to FOE for hosting, but I didn’t like their venue due to lack of oxygen, painfully loud music, lack of drink/food options, etc.
- Tickets: We’ve outgrown the current processes for issuing and redeeming tickets. I want us to provide a fairer, more foolproof way of deciding who gets into the venue. [Disclaimer: I'm the primary author of the software]
- But despite my critiques, it was still fun.

I agree that the seat-savers seemed a little overzealous. We walked into the Bagdad at 5:40… and finally found seats in the balcony. It seems unlikely that number of people were actually admitted to the theater ahead of us. There certainly didn’t *seem* to be that many people there. It’s OK to save seats for your friends in the beer line, but not for your 20 friends in the GA line, IMHO.

Also, the people standing in front of us in the main aisle of the balcony (in the “standing room only” section), was very frustrating. There should have been an usher or crowd control people to help with this. We gave them a friendly “Hey, can you please sit down? We can’t see!” Which was ignored. So while I could see the slides pretty well, I have no clue what most of the presenters look like.

Frankly I could care less about free food - it’s just another line. Maybe spend the money on some side screens (think “jumbotron”) for those of us that couldn’t see the actual presenter.

Great job… and thanks for all your hard work! It doesn’t go unnoticed, really!!