Ignite Goes Global With Coordinated Week

The first week in March 2010 will be Global Ignite Week.

Ignite is a public speaking event, of sorts.  Speakers get five minutes to talk about their geeky or DIY subjects.

The catch is the presentation behind them auto advances the 20 slides after 15 seconds.  The result is a fast paced night of ‘infotainment.’  It gives the geeks a great night to raise a beer and celebrate their community.

Here is an example talk:

Ignite was started in Seattle by Brady Forrest and Bre Pettis in 2006 and has grown rapidly since then.  There is a weekly podcast of the talks here.  If you are interested in hosting your own there is a nice FAQ here.  This features a step by step guide on how to set up your own Ignite.  Just about a year ago I set up an Ignite in Boulder.  It is a total blast.  We started as 100 friends and now sell out the largest music venue in town (which as geeks is the best joke we could ever play out).  It is an inpiring, fun a creative way to get people together.

The first week of March over 40 cities will participate in Global Ignite Week.  There is a formal post on the O’Reilly blog here and a cool map mashup of the events is here.