What’s Ignite?

Fast-paced, fun, thought-provoking, social, local, global—Ignite is all of these and more. It’s a high-energy evening of 5-minute talks by people who have an idea—and the guts to get onstage and share it with their hometown crowd. Ignite is a force for raising the collective IQ and building connections in each city.  And, via streaming and archived videos of local talks, local Ignites share all that knowledge and passion with the world.

Ignite got its start in Seattle in December, 2006, as a personal project of Brady Forrest, Technology Evangelist for O’Reilly Media, and Bre Pettis of Makerbot.com, formerly of MAKE Magazine. They dreamed up an event where people could share their ideas over beer, and sent word out through their network. On December 7, two hundred Seattle geeks looking for “a fun night of geekery and networking” squeezed into a bar on Capitol Hill. They found beer, but so much more. Brady and Bre turned the event over to O’Reilly, and nearly 200 Ignites have been held, about half of them in the past year. As Ignite entered its fourth year, O’Reilly launched Global Ignite Week to celebrate, amplify, and share the Ignite phenomenon.

Why Ignite Charlotte?

It was February 15, 2010 when I emailed ignite@oreilly.com to inquire about a contact for Ignite Charlotte. On April 13, Sam Fagan and I set the wheels in motion to launch Ignite here in the Queen City. We first sought out key community leaders to literally get their blessing and one question came up more than once: Why Ignite in Charlotte? Our response was obvious at first – why not? Reflecting back on that response, I realize that “why not” was indeed the right answer. Think about it; the Charlotte community is filled with talent from every corner of the nation and there are many ways in which technology, arts and communications professionals can come together. Pecha Kucha happens to be one that received the distinction of “Best Creative Gathering” from Creative Loafing in 2008.  And as of September 2010, we now have TEDxCharlotte.

Sam and I, along with a team of volunteers, launched the first Ignite on August 4, 2010 at Neighborhood Theatre in NODA.  And we’re revving up for Ignite Charlotte 3.

Ignite talks are exactly five minutes long and presenters share their personal or professional passions using 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds.  All the speaker videos from Ignite Charlotte have been posted on our site’s gallery page so take a look.

It is our objective to make Ignite Charlotte a local force for raising the collective IQ while providing an event that aids in the strengthening of professional connections in the Queen City. And, via streaming and archived videos of all the talks, we seek to share all that knowledge and passion with the world.

Ignite is about ideas. Ideas can change the world and in our case, it only takes 5 minutes to do so…the Ignite motto: “Enlighten us, but make it quick.”