Ignite LA took place on Monday, March 1st at Cinespace in Hollywood. The place was so packed they had to put chairs in the walkways for us to sit on. So what was everyone there for?
To be inspired of course. All week long Ignite events are taking place across the planet in different cities. Known as Global Ignite Week, participants get five minutes to present on stage with their 20 slides and try to enlighten and inspire the crowd.
The tag line for all of the events is “Enlighten us, but make it quick”, with topics ranging from social good, to robots, to remote viewing?? This was my first Ignite and I am sad to say I had to ask my friends that had been to past events what the point was. Thankfully there were a few presenters that stood out and actually made me think “Wow, that’s really cool, I want to know more.”
Kurt Daradics bravely took the stage and gave a very touching and funny speech about being a cyborg. He shared with the room a personal story that many have never heard, how he was born with a condition that left him deaf with 40% hearing loss until they were able to implant a piece of metal in his ear that conducts sound through the bone. I even had people coming up to me at other events this week to talk about how great they thought it was.
Photo by Laurie Percival
Eric Gradman shared a range of projects he has worked on including one called the Narcisystem, a wearable suit of biometric sensors which allows different parts of his body to control the elements in the room around him like the lighting and sound. How you can use RFID tags to turn any space into an interactive one and he talked about Sockieokie, a project that will be unveiled at a Syyn Labs, formerly Mindshare Labs, event this Saturday. He definitely inspired me to get out to the next Mindshare event.
The last presenter, Adam Sadowsky, treated us to some of the specifics behind the recently debuted video for OKGO’s new song “This Too Shall Pass”. It was released at 4pm on Monday and encompasses a Rube Goldberg machine. The band was really specific on their requirements and it was quite impressive that Syyn Labs was able to meet them all and pull off such a cool video in one shot.
The presenters that I liked, I really liked but they were few and far between. Overall I found the evening interesting but not necessarily enlightening. I didn’t seem like I had experienced what I had heard a typical Ignite event was like. That being said I am still willing to attend another one as long as they make some changes.
To the organizers I would have to recommend next time get a bigger venue, have the community vote ahead of time on who they want to see present, and for the love of god, have food available.
(Photos by Jim Alden @TechFrog)
