What appeals to me about O’Reilly’s Ignite format is the free and open information exchange and the incredible opportunity to network.
There are only about 15 presentations in a night, 5 minutes each, with a rock hard stop at the end. At 5 minutes, you’re off the stage and the next one begins. We put a big break in the middle and at the end for people to talk, mingle, and share ideas. If you see something that gets you jazzed, you can run over and talk with the person right away, and odds are you’ll be surrounded by other people who are just as excited as you.
It took me a while to really get some value out of Twitter, which didn’t happen until I found a few local Twitterati who shared some common interests. Those contacts took me to new contacts, and now I follow so many interesting people it can be a bit distracting. I think Ignite can be like Twitter in creating those sort of unexpected connections that lead to exciting ideas for both the people who come and Phoenix overall.
It’s not a big lecture or presentation, just a bunch of hard hitting, short and to the point I’d had a Twitter account for a while, but what really took it off for me was when I found local people who had similar interests and we began to talk. Each new connection led to even more new connections, and soon I was having all kinds of interesting
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[...] In 2008, a group of people who believe that Phoenix is more than a barren desert (at least when it comes to creativity and ideas) decided to bring Ignite to the Valley. Here’s one of the first blog posts, written before the first Ignite Phoenix. [...]