Newsstand: February 9, 2010
Duly Quoted: Adam Giambrone
Bob Kinnear isn't Greg Kinnear
Newsstand: February 8, 2010
Scale Model City, Actual-Size Grime
"Socionomics" expert Rohan Jayasekera explains how, in confusing economic times when people mix optimism and pessimism, people end up wearing shoes with pink skulls.
It's not hard to get a bunch of webheads together in Toronto. All you need to do is rent out the basement of the Drake Hotel, plug in a projector and a mic, and hold an origami competition.
Ignite is held in cities all over the world in an attempt "to capture the best of geek culture." It's no surprise the thirteen talks at last night's Ignite Toronto (the second in the city) were heavily themed towards social networking and online community building.
The central conceit of Ignite is the speed presentation: every speaker had just five minutes and a slide deck that advanced every fifteen seconds. As speakers have no control over their slides, sometimes they become rushed or are forced into uncomfortable silences. Still, it's all part of the fun.
Some of the highlights included Corey Reid, whose talk drawing parallels between software development and Hong Kong kung-fu movie tropes included a slide subtitled "Bruce Lee is kicking that man in the nuts."
"I actually don't have anything to say about that," he admitted.
Leigh Honeywell of hacklab.to also gave a breathlessly rapid-fire talk in which she revealed that Seth Hardy, a co-founder of the collective, had hooked the hacklab toilet up to Twitter. (It doesn't seem to work anymore, though. I think that's called a cistern failure.)
A flock of origami cranes.
Oh, and as for the origami competition, it was inspired by the Japanese legend that says anyone who makes a thousand paper cranes would be granted one wish. Nobody managed to make that many, but three people won prizes. Torontoist did have a go, but owing to lack of spatial ability, managed to get the bird both upside-down and the wrong way around, and if the crane had granted any wish, it would be for euthanasia.
If you want the public reaction to the talks, Twitter is obviously the place to be, under the hashtag #igniteTO. There will be another Ignite event in the new year.
Photographs by James Kachan, courtesy of IgniteTO.
This article originally mistakenly claimed that Leigh Honeywell had connected hacklab's toilet up to Twitter herself; in fact, the project was the work of Seth Hardy, another member of the hacklab collective.
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A small correction, appended above, concerning said hacklab toilet.
IGNITE is a direct rip-off of PechaKucha. www.pecha-kucha.org
PechaKuchaNight was the first format of this kind, and is present in 230 cities. The Spoke Club here in Toronto hosted a PechaKuchaNight last week: www.pechakuchanight.com This presentation was well-attended with around 70 guests and 10 speakers, some on video from Tokyo.
It is a trademarked format and available for licensing. What makes PechaKuchaNight different is that presentations are not about random things, but follow a common topic or industry. The topic of last week was "The Creative Mind", for example. There are PechaKuchas for biotech, for basketball, for bollywood, etc.. so the audience is both receptive and the networking afterwards is interesting for those attending. PechaKuchaNight.com is planning a series of bigger events open to the public in Toronto for 2010. Looking for venues now. If you have any ideas please get in touch: PechaKuchaNight@gmail.com