IgniteWaterloo #5 rocked

Hit up IgniteWaterloo tonight with…

my brutha, Dave White, to…

hear some talks, but first…

showed up…

early to get…

good seats,…

take some pics…

of marshmallow sculpture (Melissa? is the cat in the cat hat making a sheep),…

drink a beer (Bastow!), and say hi to some…

friends (James, Andrew, Laura, Agnes, Ben).

The Hub is smaller than THEMUSEUM, where I saw my last Ignite a while back, but that made it easy to find find…

our good friend and IgniteWaterloo + TEDxWaterloo organizer, Christine Hamon!

Speaker David Yoon talks with speaker Neal Moogk-Soulis.

Looks like I’m not the only one with a camera.

David Yoon on IT duty at the podium pre-show.

Amy Vandenberg, and her fast moving co-gecko, Mr. Karl Allen-Muncey were chatting up, hmmm, is that Marty Finestone?

Bastow!  My D90 shootin’ brutha from another mutha.

Karl chews the fat with Kurt Wissent.

Bessie Schenk’s back, with friends.

Holy smokes, Ramy’s back from Asia.

More people, fewer empty seats.

Ok, this marshmallow ferris wheel is pretty impressive (and won a prize I think).

Martin Laforest (left), of IQC fame.

The place really filled up.  I heard they might have overbooked this flight, expecting (and then hoping for) a certain attrition rate.

These people were guarding the cookies.

Yay, for our co-M.C., Erica Waugh.  Great job!

Then it was jammin’.

To standing-room-only.

Phil Bast steadied the camera, and the talks began.  For the uninitiated, the format is a 5-minute talk with 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds.  A very challenging format (from my experience).  Up first:

• Kevin Sutton – Slam Poetry
• Neal Moogk-Soulis – Choo Choo Choose to Reuse
• Ryan Consell – Making a Monster
• Kirk Zurell – Suffr
• Kyle Mackie – Cranially Endowed
• Warren Spires – The KW Humane Society: A Centre of Animal Welfare Excellence
• Sean Zister – Social Entrepreneurship: Creating Social Values
• Matt Scobel – Ideas, Action and the Evils of Planning
• Scott Chantler – The Genesis of Two Generals

 

Live bloggin’ and tweetin’ abounding.

Then a…

short…

break…

Hello Gavin FitzPatrick (left).  Then next up:

• Simone Panziera – The Beautiful UnBrandables
• Susan Koswan – In Defense of Dandelions
• David Yoon – Tequila
• Andrew Coppolino – A Waterloo Region Eats Smorgasbord
• Jason Dykstra – What the $#%@ is Mediation?
• Robb Farago – 5 Days for the Homeless
• Paul Carvalho – Congruent Software Testing
• Karen Cecile – Fun With Demographics

Double pic for Simone for being a kick-ass maker in his Tavistock studio *and* having the guts to deliver a Sean Connery accent.

Aside: I always liked these shoes Dave owns.

Phil’s on the camera non-stop for hours.  That’s focus.

Then Erica sent us…

on…

our…

way.  Many thanks to the people that make these events happen.  It’s not magic: it’s a helluva lot of work.  And thanks to the sponsors for contributing to the cultural fabric of our community.  This stuff makes KW a great place to be.

Please consider giving a talk: we get out of this what we put in.  I gave my talk at the first IgniteWaterloo, and it was a great challenge and a lot of fun.

Happy making,

DW