Ignite Community Site and Ignite SF

I am happy to announce the release of our Ignite community site (http://ignite.oreilly.com/). We held our first Ignite on December 7, 2006 in Seattle. We had 25 speakers each give a five-minute talk with only 20 slides. Since that night O'Reilly has held them in Seattle, Boston (one was held last week), San Francisco, and San Jose. We have upcoming Ignites in San Francisco, Berlin, Beijing and at Adobe's MAX in Chicago. We know of people doing them in Milan, Toronto, Chicago, and London.

Like Foo Camp, BarCamp and Mind Camp, Ignite provides geeks a place to meet network and share - it just adds a set of short talks and a contest into the mix. We hope this site helps spread the Ignite meme beyond just O'Reilly produced events. Currently the site has a handy HowTo and allows you to list your upcoming Ignite. We've also created a place to share pictures and videos. In time we are going to add more tools to help organizers. Feel free to leave any suggestions for the site in the HowTo comments.

I'd also like to announce the first SF Ignite. It's happening on 10/16 at the DNA Lounge. We are going to feature 16 speakers. Ignite is open to the public and it's the night before the Web 2.0 Summit. RSVP at Upcoming.

I am looking for speakers. If you have something geeky that you want to share in 20 slides (each on for only 15 seconds a slide), then please submit a talk. Some suggestions: don't submit a product demo, submit a how-to, something inspirational or some lessons learned. I'll let would-be speakers know a week in advance. If you wish to sponsor (and pay for drink tickets) send me a ping.

I'll also be holding Ignites at this month's Adobe MAX conference in Chicago on 9/30 (you must be going to the conference to attend; submit a talk if you are!) and in Berlin for the Web 2.0 Expo on 11/5 (submit a talk).