Author Archive for Raven Zachary

Here come the videos…

Published by Raven Zachary on February 6, 2008. 7 Comments Tags: , , , .

The first batch of videos from Ignite Portland 2 are starting to appear online, thanks to our friend A.J. (aka Linuxaid). A.J. did an amazing job shooting video for the first Ignite Portland in October 2007, and he’s at it again for Ignite Portland 2, less than 24 hours after the completion of the event. As he will be posting them throughout the day, you can look for the most recent videos directly from Linuxaid’s YouTube profile page. We will update this blog entry with links to the individual videos are they come in…

Ignite Portland 2 Videos:

What is Ignite? by Scott Kveton
Where Does Imagination Go? by Chet Fiedler
That’s Entertainment: Politics as Theater in Campaign ‘08 by Jon Perr
Open Source Rockets by Sarah Sharp
Time for Portland to Take Its Place by Chris Logan
Wouldn’t You Like To Be a Pepper (Expert) Too? by Kelly Guimont
Beauty in Abandonment by Peat Bakke
How to be an Undercover Hooker by Jessica Bruder
Living a Made Up Life - And Getting Away With It! by Adrienne Fritze
Biodiesel: the stuff you need to know by Brian Jamison
Six Weeks to Robot by Brandon Philips
Why Deutschland Loves David Hasselhoff by Mario Schulzke
What Would Dr. Seuss Say About Online Communities? by Dawn Foster
Irrashaimase!: Traditional Sushi in a Newfangled World by Melissa Casburn
A History of the Stick Figure by Eric Lewallen

That’s all of the videos! HUGE thanks and props to A.J. (a.k.a. linuxaid) for getting these up and available so fast! Less than 24 hours, just like last time. This guy is a superstar! :-)

If you didn’t get a chance to register at the event…

Published by Raven Zachary on February 6, 2008. 0 Comments Tags: , .

…then please do so online now. This will help us plan for future events.

The online registration form.

I’m am far too tired to do a recap post tonight (and I’m guessing Josh will do that on Wednesday). The event was a huge success and I am so proud to live in a place like Portland where these types of events are possible.

What a cool place we live in!

PS: We’ll get video and the slides posted in the next 24-48 hours.

Ignite Portland on the Radio

Published by Raven Zachary on February 4, 2008. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Tomorrow is the big day! With Upcoming RSVPs well over 500 now, we’re hoping to fill every seat in the house at the Bagdad Theater. As a reminder, you do not have to RSVP using Upcoming to attend. We’ll have seats for 580, and standing room for a few hundred, so while we think it’s going to be a packed house tomorrow (at least the seats), we don’t expect that we’re going to have to turn away anyone due to fire code limits this time. We know from a few people that the fire code issue at the last event actually kept a few people away. Come one, come all!

Ignite Portland is going to be included in the Rick Emerson Show on AM 970 (”Solid State Radio”) today sometime in the 2-3pm hour. If you want to listen in live over the Internet, or listen to a recording later on, both the live stream and the recorded shows are available from the AM 970 website. You can, of course, just tune into 970 AM during the 2-3pm hour, as well. I will be interviewed by Rick Emerson and provide some background on Ignite Portland 2 and what people can expect. We appreciate the opportunity from AM 970 to get the word out. Twitter and Upcoming have been great avenues to market the event, but getting coverage in The Oregonian and AM 970 will help us reach those people not actively participating in the Portland online community.

Update: Here’s the audio of the show. Listen to his Raven and Rick Emerson discussing the Ignite format, highlights of the presentations we’re going to see at Ignite Portland 2, and how cool Portland is in general! Click to listen in the embedded player below, or click here to download the MP3 file directly (2.5MB, about 5.5 minutes).

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play

Welcome, Oregonians!

Published by Raven Zachary on January 26, 2008. 0 Comments Tags: , .


photo by Scott Kveton

The Oregonian this morning has an article about Ignite Portland 2 on the cover of the Living (C) section. Laura Oppenheimer is the author. There is also an online version of the article, posted at OregonLive.com - “What’s on your mind? You’ve got five minutes …,” although you will see from the photo that Scott Kveton took above, the print version is worth the trip to the store to buy a copy for $0.50. There are a few people whose names were not mentioned in The Oregonian article who have been a big help with Ignite Portland planning - Scott Kveton, Adam Duvander, Aaron Hockley, Ann Marcus, the rest of the board of Legion of Tech, Renny Gleeson, and a whole host of volunteers who help from crowd control to cleanup and everything else that needs to be done to make Ignite Portland operate smoothly. Thank you!

If you’re just finding out about Ignite Portland 2 from the article in The Oregonian - WELCOME! The event is open to all. Here’s some quick information about the event - we hope to see you there!

* Ignite Portland 2 takes place Tuesday, February 5th, from 6-9pm at the Bagdad Theatrer on 3702 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd. We have posted directions to the venue.

* Doors open at 5:15pm and admission is always FREE. We are recommending that you get there early as there is always a possibility that we hit the fire code limit again this time. For the first Ignite Portland event, we hit fire code at 297 people over at the beautiful Wieden+Kennedy space in NE Portland. We had to move the venue this time to accommodate more people. The Bagdad will hold 580 sitting, and I think we can get around 700 total people in there.

* We are hoping to get an attendance count prior to the night of the event for planning purposes. If you have a few minutes, it would help us if you’d visit our page on Upcoming, and add yourself to the RSVP list. You do not have to RSVP to attend, but this process helps us in terms of event planning and logistics.

* Make sure you take a look at the agenda for the event. For Ignite Portland 2, we’ll have 14 speakers and an intro on ‘What is Ignite?’ for the newcomers. You can also check out videos from the first event to get a sense for how this all works.

* Ignite Portland will continue on a regular basis. We’ve already begun work on Ignite Portland 3, and will share details on the third event the night of February 5th at Ignite Portland 2.

* If you’re inspired to submit a presentation idea for the next Ignite Portland, please be patient for a few more weeks until we get the submission form back online for the next event. We look forward to your submission!

* This event is supported by our wonderful sponsors - you can check out the list on the right sidebar of this site. Thank you, sponsors!

We look forward to seeing you at Ignite Portland 2!

Submit your presentation proposals, deadline is January 15th

Published by Raven Zachary on December 19, 2007. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I am pleased to announce that our new presentation proposal submission site for Ignite Portland has launched. Do you want to present at Ignite Portland 2? Now is the time to submit your idea for consideration. The new system allows anyone to review proposals as they come in, including an RSS feed. Check it out!

Ignite Portland Presentation Proposals

Many, many thanks to Igal Koshevoy at AutomateIt for donating his expertise and time to build the presentation proposal site for Ignite Portland - very cool.

The deadline for submission is January 15th. The Ignite Portland planning committee will select the finalists shortly after the deadline and inform the selected presenters.

We look forward to your creative ideas!

And here come the videos…

Published by Raven Zachary on October 27, 2007. 2 Comments Tags: .

A.J. (a.k.a. Linuxaid), one of the attendees, has posted excellent videos of all 18 presentations from the first Ignite Portland. A.J. was sitting over by the screens, so the focus is on the speakers themselves. We will be posting videos with the slides in the background when Josh gets back from his 2-week trip.

Thank you, A.J.!

Doors open at 5:30pm!

Published by Raven Zachary on October 25, 2007. 0 Comments

As a reminder, the doors open for Ignite Portland at 5:30pm. We expect to reach capacity tonight - we can only fit 300 people in the space, based on fire code limits. Apologies go out now to person #301 and beyond. We’re not looking forward to turning people away.

If you’re worried about getting in, get there by 5:30pm.

See you tonight (I hope!).

Tonight at Ignite: dinner

Published by Raven Zachary on October 25, 2007. 1 Comment

Thanks to our generous sponsors, we will be feeding you a free, full meal catered from Nicholas Restaurant tonight. This is quite possibly the world’s best Lebanese food outside of Beirut.

The Ignite Portland Poster

Published by Raven Zachary on October 22, 2007. 1 Comment

This is the Ignite Portland poster designed by Wieden+Kennedy to promote the event internally to W+K employees. Great work, Renny!

Ignite Portland Poster

‘Full’ doesn’t mean ‘don’t bother showing up’

Published by Raven Zachary on October 22, 2007. 3 Comments

As Josh and Dawn have mentioned in prior blog posts, we have generated a greater interest in the event than the venue can sustain. Fire code is 297, and we capped Upcoming at 325. I’m sure the numbers would have exceeded 400 by now. Based on the limitations of Upcoming, it was too difficult for us to implement a true RSVP system where those who pre-registered were given priority. Upcoming does not give us a username to real name mapping and many of those who RSVP’ed will end up being no-shows. The best solution was for us to simply make the event first-come, first-served. We will close the doors once we hit the magic fire code number. Yes, having to turn people away at the door is going to suck. The alternative was scrambling to find another venue which would have added far too much complexity with only a week remaining before the event and even worse, having to get the word out to everyone who already expressed an interest.

The flip side to hitting capacity is that a number of you might be thinking, ‘why bother even trying to get in?!’ We run the risk that we’re not going to end up with a packed house because no one wants to ‘race’ for a spot. The solution? Show up early. If you’re there at 5:30pm when the doors open, I am pretty sure that you’re going to get in. You’ll also get first dibs on the food and drinks. If you’re running late, trying to find a parking spot, stuck in traffic, waiting for public transportation, whatever the delay may be…we’re sorry, but we cannot offer reserved seating.

What we are going to do, however, is keep a live head count update on the Ignite Portland Twitter account. What you can do is add Ignite Portland as a friend on Twitter, turn on notifications for this account, and make sure you have notifications setup in your Twitter preferences to be sent via SMS to your mobile phone. This will provide you with a live head count to your mobile phone while you’re busy making your way to the event. If you aren’t on Twitter, go sign up and follow these instructions. If this is too complicated, then just show up. We’re providing this to Twitter users as a convenience. It’s the best we can do.