Now that the event is over, it’s time to tell us what you thought about it.
After we do an event, we like to have a thread where you can comment and tell us …
What worked well? (We’ll try not to change those)
Where were the rough spots that we should improve for next time?
So this post is your chance - post a comment below, let us know what you thought of the event, what you liked and give us your suggestions for how to make it better. Just like everything else about Ignite Portland, we need you, our community, to contribute here to make the next one the very best it can be.
One of the best Ignites yet! The speakers and topics were all consistently great this time!
I touch on my Portland Ignite experience here. Thanks all!
It was the best one yet. Fast paced and well organized. Beer line got backed up - not sure how to fix that though.
I also liked the partnership with @30hourday & Oregon Food Bank for attendees to bring food or toys. Would like to see that continue with future Ignites.
Thanks to all - speakers were excellent and LoT rocks!
It was my first IP and I left, at the end of the day, feeling good, intellectually engaged and felt it was worth my time.
Most of the talks were too good to make up for the others.
Thanks to all the presenters and volunteers for putting on this event, it makes me feel good about living in Portland.
Personally, I did not feel the value in topics that were too personal, granted they were huge events in the life of the presenters, but too little value to take away in 5 minutes at least.
Crystal’s talk and Elena’s talk, honestly, made me feel queasy
Colleen’s talk, too little time spent on the “epiphany” portion
RoadKill talk - how many are going to find it useful or entertaining?
Dating ninja - what is the point? humor may be? ok
Having said that,
High marks
Kent Bye – The Resurgence of Hula Hooping
Marcus Miller – How to cultivate a wisdom of craft.
Phil Earnhardt – Robots Growing Up: The Future of Robotic Movement
Adam DuVander – The Donkey Man is not on Facebook
Brett Stern – Rural mailboxes
Curtis C. Chen – How to Solve Any Puzzle in Less Than 47 Minutes
I don’t know if something changed in the vetting process, but overall the presentations were of superior caliber - still a couple clunkers, but the rest were spot-on. I was pleased to see almost none of the technical glitches from the last Ignite, although it did seem that a couple slides were up for less than the allotted 15 seconds; might just be a mind trick though.
Muchas Gracias Encender!
Great event. Disappointing streaming experience for those of us who couldn’t attend.
It was my first IP. I would come again. It’s different than just seeing re-runs on-line.
I liked the Road Kill Cafe presentation. I mean Ignite Portland is about letting the average joe talk, but this lady knew how to take the stage. Wasted no time from the end of the previous.
I liked the different styles from educational (road kill) to philosophical (kant) to theoretical (bikes) to inspirational (signals) from heart-busting (cults), to brain-busting (puzzles). Even the medical (epiphany). What more could you want? And these are topics and people I would not normally get to rub shoulders with. It’s not about polish. It’s a slice of life. It’s like Recent Changes Camp. Thank you for providing me something like a 3D “Internet” experience. And it’s free. Thanks sponsors. I think Tri-met needs to sponsor this avant guarde experience, too.
The speakers were awesome - but the stream was dreadful. Don’t know what the technical issues were, but there were people out of town trying to watch and the stream wasn’t up to snuff. Just sayin’
Kirby Urner, who lives a handful of blocks from the Bagdad, was my local host for the event. It was Kirby’s first Ignite; he blogged about his experience at
http://controlroom.blogspot.com/2009/11/ignite-portland.html .
I’m now back home in Colorado. I’ll have my own comments in the next day or so, but I wanted to publicly thank Kirby for his support.
This Ignite seemed to go very smoothly, and I liked having the new format that included more talks. Many thanks to the organizers and speakers.
I was thoroughly impressed with the quality of the speakers, the diversity of the presentations, and the professional preparation that went into the talks. It makes a huge difference to require presentations 2.5 weeks before the event. People will not start practicing until their presentation is done, and this gets us off our a.. to do that. That’s the largest lead time of any city I know of; I think matching your time would be the simplest way for other cities to up the quality of presentations. I was grateful for the extraordinary courage of the non-tech presentations: Crystal, Colleen, Adam. I’m so grateful that something with tech roots has expanded and embraced non-tech topics. Tara Horn’s presentation from PDX last spring is one of my all-time favorite Ignite presentations.
I have presented at five different cities: Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Phoenix, and Portland. I’m a bit of an Ignite anthropologist; I love to observe the differences in the culture of the events. The short description I would use for Portland is “authentically eclectic” — that applies to both the audience and the presentations. There was nothing weird for the sake of being weird. There were no Captain Hammer tiny cue cards and no presentation even hinted at trying to pitch the audience. The audience was laid-back but also quite engaged in every presentation. I was so grateful to hear applause when I mentioned Bucky Fuller in my presentation.
I regret not being in town for the tech rehearsal a week before. Legion of Tech is legendary in the lore of Ignite. I got to meet several of you briefly on Thursday, but would have loved to be around that more-relaxed meeting. The only breakdown was that updates to my slides didn’t get incorporated into my presentation. I rapidly realized that nobody would know the difference unless they download my slide notes from http://floatingbones.com/robot.pdf .
The volunteers were great from first contact almost a month ago through the end of the event. Super job all the way through. I also wanted to thank my PDX friend Kirby Urner for his support. This was Kirby’s first time at Ignite.
The event was perfect.
As it was my first time at such an awesome event, I liked so much of it! I quite enjoyed the human spirit the presenters provided! I thought the variety of topics was good, and always needed, and I felt the support of the audience was wonderful! It would make many want to do it next time!
My only critique would be that I missed some kind of moment where the individual would be introduced, as well as the title of their topic before the individual begins.
Wonderful evening! I look forward to March 2010!
I’ve been to all the Ignites and this one was very solid. High points were Colleen’s Epiphany, Adam’s Donkey Man and Ward Cunningham’s bike talk.
Low points were the bloody raodkill and turkey talk. We were appalled by the grotesque glee of the speaker and crowd reaction to the roadkill talk. Do we really need more goofy talks about what people eat? How about a food (and blood/gore free Ignite)?
Might be nice to get a real graphic designer to help with the visual aspects of presenting the sponsors logos too.
Overall this was a great IP, better than the last one by far, maybe not the best ever, but right up there. Nice job guys!
My perspective as a speaker is that it went flawlessly.
There was an audience, slides and sound. The essential ingredients.
The experience was fun, and I felt that I was kept “in the loop” through the whole process.
I loved the tech walk-through, although I thought it would be nice to be invited to change our slides after the test. I didn’t feel the need to but it seemed like a logical point to *want* to change things, especially with such a large lead-time on the submission.
Overall, as I said, it went flawlessly. Thanks muchly for the great time at both this and the previous Ignite.
This was my fourth Ignite Portland. I’ve enjoyed them all. I thought everything went well this time and had fun as always.
My highlights:
Rick’s DB Cooper talk was a great start.
Douglas Wolk & Phil Earnhardt’s talks were really informative.
Crytal’s & Colleens talks were touching, great!
Adam’s Duvander & Kent Bye’s talks were fun.
Ward Cunningham’s talk was spot on (I’m a biker, so a bit of bias)
Since you asked for good AND bad feedback, here are my lowlights:
1. Randall Schwartz really really loves Randall Schwartz, doesn’t he? Get over thine self.
2. Sponsor videos were an awesome bonus but damn, they were LOUD!!
3. Beer line again was long, but I met some cool people in line so I really didn’t mind too much.
We were aware that the stream went down toward the end of the first part (Adam DuVander) and then had same issues at the start of the 2nd half.
Is there something else that was wrong with the quality of the stream? (Audio is a known challenge at the theater- I hear this may be improved by next Ignite). Was there an issue with video quality or ads or something else?
Detailed input could provide valuable info to LoT for making decisions on securing network and CDN services for future Ignites.
Ooops! This is what was streamed out live (cut for each speaker):
http://techlovelive.blip.tv
Enjoy!
It’s odd that LT is talking about someone who didn’t present at this conference. I don’t know of a “Randall” there.