This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by James Britt. Original Post: BarCamp Follow-up Follow-up: Ignite Phoenix Feed Title: James Britt: Ruby Development Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/JamesBritt-Home Feed Description: James Britt: Playing with better toys Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by James Britt Latest Posts From James Britt: Ruby Development

At the recent RubyConf 2007 I attended my first RejectConf. Moderated by Ryan Davis, it attempted to give a public venue for the many whose conference proposals were rejected.

One very interesting aspect was how the talks were arranged. Ryan called everyone to attention,and then asked for talks that were five minutes or shorter. Those with the declared shortest time went first. Once those were done, a call was made for talks of 10 minutes or less. And so on, each pass allowing for longer presentations, provided there was still time before we got kicked out of the conference room.

While at BarCamp I started wondering if that would not have made for a good scheduling algorithm.

Now, some time ago, I started hearing about Ignite Seattle

Ignite Seattle is a geek event that combines on-site geekery, sharing, and innovation (and drinking).

It sounded like a geek party with tools and alcohol.

The Ignite meme seems to have taken off; there’s also Ignite Boston, and Ignite SF.

While they all seem to involve geeks showing stuff off, the one in San Francisco has a particularly interesting approach to time management:

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds?

This, of course, is Pecha_Kucha. This, too, would have made for an interesting scheme for BarCamp, though it presumes that people have come with slides prepared.

When I saw the general “Ignite” concept taking hold, the idea of local Ignite gathering seemed very interesting to me, and I set up a domain for it: http://www.ignitephoenix.com

I’m not really looking to try to organize Yet Another Monthly Gathering (I have enough already with The Phoenix Ruby User Group and Refactor Phoenix), but if you think you’d like to spearhead a night of geek presentations, demonstrations, and wanton nerd partying, I can give you a hand with our very own Ignite Phoenix.