Reminder: Ignite is this Tuesday!

A wee reminder that Ignite Wellington #4 is this Tuesday! Ignite is free, but please do register here because tickets are flying out the door.

Every Ignite, we collect donations for charity. This time we're collecting for the Child Cancer Foundation, so please remember to bring some loose change on the night. We'll have a couple of volunteers who will be collecting on their behalf.

The timetable for the evening is:
6.00pm - Doors open
6.15pm - Ignite Contest in foyer
7.15pm - Contest judging
7.30pm - Ignite talks start
8.30pm - Intermission
8.45pm - More talks

You'll be able to purchase drinks or snacks from the Paramount bar, but you might want to grab dinner before the 7.30pm start time from one of the fine establishments along Courtenay Place. If you don't want to participate in the Ignite Contest, it's ok to come for the 7.30pm speeches.

Once again, Ignite would not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors, so we’d like you to give our three gold sponsors a huge round of applause on the night: SilverStripe, Provoke & Stephenson Thorner Ltd.

We're looking forward to a night of inspiration and fun. See you there!

Strike a pose - WeDo is in the house!

Our roving photographer for the evening is Jason from WeDo Photography & Design, who has previously captured the wonderful Ignite photographs that you can see here and here.

Jason will also set up the WeDo Photobooth, and this time we thought it would be fun to photograph all of the teams and the ‘projects’ they make in the Make Contest. If you do take part in the contest, please step into the photobooth with your finished ‘creations’!

Not sure what the WeDo Photobooth is? Check out the photo below for one smoking hot example! Photobooth is best described as:

One button. Four different photos. Four seconds apart. One photosheet ejected from the booth only moments later. From the privacy of our Photobooth who knows what your guests will get up to! The Photobooth perfectly and easily accommodates groups of 2-4 people, but we’ve had as many as 8 in the booth at any one time!

We will post a selection of Jason's photos on our FB page, and online, so keep an eye out for them afterwards.

Jeramiah Ross - Life out on the waves.

Tales from Audio Sound Designer/Composer Jeramiah Ross

Jeramiah Ross vibrates air particles to cause emotional reactions and various responses in human beings for a living. He designs music and sound for interactive media content and user interface experiences (AKA video games) and other mediums. He has had a great response to his work picking up several awards along with maintaing a independent music career as Module and setting up digital record labels, producing various projects along with working in film.

Jeramiah will be coming ashore to give an overview of what life is like living out on the sound waves.

Video:

You can view this video on YouTube to watch in Hi-Def.

Arohanui to our sponsors

Ignite Wellington is brought to you by our awesome sponsors. They ignite our world, and make it possible to showcase our speakers, so we wanted to give them a shout out and let them know how much we love them!

We’re fortunate to have three Gold sponsors for Ignite #4. We say a huge ‘thank you’, shout out 'ka pai!' and give a big, warm Ignitewelli bear hug to: CMS superstars Silverstripe, who have supported us since our first event; Provoke, perhaps Asia-Pacific's most awesome online experience consultancy; and we’re delighted to welcome Stephenson Thorner Ltd on board too.

Please make sure you give our three sponsors a warm round of applause on the night, as we simply couldn’t pull Ignite together without them.

You can support us too by coming along to the Paramount on Nov 8th - we look forward to seeing you!

P.S. Make sure you register to secure your seat! For regular updates follow us on Twitter at @ignitewelli, and become a fan on Facebook.

Keep your eyes on the prize

“Kia ora - what's this Ignite contest about then eh?", we hear you ask. “And why do people keep talking about marshmallows?”

Our Ignite evenings always start with a contest (start time: 6.15pm), where you team up and compete against each other in a challenge revealed on the night.

George Bernard Shaw reportedly observed “we don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing”, and we believe that the Ignite contest is a great way to warm up before the main event, and unleash some serious creative energy!

Our previous contests have seen teams build towers out of spaghetti and marshmallows, construct the ultimate paper airplane, and piece together stories from newspapers.

This time, we’ve taking the contest to a whole new level. The game is simple, the rules are few, and it will be a contest of pure creativity and engineering prowess. Oh, and you’ll need to unleash your inner child. Or borrow someone else’s.

You can also win seriously cool prizes for your creative efforts, and for Ignitewelli #4, we’re thankful to Mojo Coffee, Whittakers Chocolate, Fishhead Magazine and O'Reilly for generously donating the excellent prizes we have up for grabs.

Don’t worry if you’re not taking part in the Ignite Contest - everyone who registers will go into the draw for some of these prizes too.

We would also appreciate it if you could bring along any spare change to donate to our chosen charity: the Child Cancer Foundation. They rely on the generosity of big-hearted New Zealanders to help them do their excellent work, so please remember to bring a donation - it would mean a lot to us.

Mike Eager - Poems from a long walk for freedom : Vietnam

Mike Eager is a Wellington poet. His books are Warning:Poems (with Alex Staines) and Living First Class in a Third World Country. A short film, The Firewood Tree, was based on and includes a sequence of his poems.

Mike has set himself the challenge of a series of walks and writing a poem from each day of the journey. The five poems in this talk are from the two Vietnam sections, walking from Ha Long Bay to Sa Pa in the mountains and down to the border with China at Lao Cai. A series of cards is in production with proceeds to go to anti-slavery charities.

Video:

You can view this video on YouTube to watch in Hi-Def.

Samantha Hannah - *Why* do Wellingtonians have a fascination with black?

Samantha is a well-known Wellington style consultant and fashion stylist. As well as being the director of two businesses, and writing for Next and FishHead Magazines, she is Mum to two girls, who have taught her a new level of communication.

In her 5 minutes on the Ignite stage, Samantha will consider the unique style of Wellingtonians, and how we measure up.

Video:

You can view this video on YouTube to watch in Hi-Def.

Edward Murrell - Chasing merino: a year of New Zealand made

Edward Murrell is a programmer who spends far more time in clothing shops than his fellow geeks think is healthy. A bit over a year ago, after becoming incensed that all his merino clothing was manufactured offshore, he committed to a year of only buying New Zealand made clothes. He blames this on beer, but has forgiven it since.

Edward has interests in economics, the environment, and rock climbing, as well as allegedly being able to dance. He is adamant that he is not a hippy.

Video:

You can view this video on YouTube to watch in Hi-Def.

John Robson - Being Reasonable

JR (only his mother calls him John, and only when he’s naughty) works for a rather lovely software company called Provoke Solutions and is also known as Mr Reasonable. This is a title he’s had for some time, and his two daughters are constantly challenging its appropriateness.

JR worked for 11 years for Merrill Lynch in London, and has a background in economics; this means he struggles to give a straight answer to many questions, yet has an opinion on everything. He is also the current Chairman of the Child Cancer Foundation, a charity that has the sole aim of helping children and their families on their journey with childhood cancer.

He turned to making cartoons with his eldest daughter a few years ago as he wanted a way to remember conversations and moments, and photos just didn’t cut it. He is going to spend his 5 minutes talking about being reasonable, and the various conversations with his kids that lead to the creation of his cartoons.

Video:

You can view this video on YouTube to watch in Hi-Def.

Brenda Wallace - Oversharing geeks on wheels

Brenda is an open source hacker from Whakamaru, who enjoys malted beers, grilled haloumi, bluetooth, utf8, and the oxford comma. She contributes to drupal, debian, statusnet, OLPC, cpan, and several more obscure open source projects.

In the past Brenda has organised Super happy dev house in Wellington, many hackfests, girl geek dinners, and a minor role in bringing linux.conf.au to Wellington. Today she works 8 to 7 in order to pay a nanny. In her 5 minutes onstage, she'll talk about gadgets for measuring and motivating geeks to get moving away from the keyboard.

I bet you have no idea where Whakamaru is.

Video:

You can view this video on YouTube to watch in Hi-Def.

Christine Brooks - Improv and other drugs

Christine is in love with the magic of improvised theatre and has travelled the world chasing the improv dragon. She had her first taste of improv crack young and has slowly upped her intake ever since, culminating in her lifestyle choice of today. Up until recently, Christine worked in a government job where managing risk was one of her key deliverables. One day she realised that she actually quite liked risk and was sick of managing it. She now spends her days creating improvised theatre and delivering training in a variety of areas using the principles of improv theatre.

Improv theatre is a highly collaborative and innovative art form that relies on building a strong team grounded in positivity and trust, inspiring your other players, saying yes and being present. Christine is a member of the Applied Improvisation Network and attended the Annual Applied Improv Network Conference held in Baltimore in July 2011. Christine lives in a bush enclosed enclave in Eastbourne from which she schemes, dreams and gazes down upon her future empire. Her Official Internet Website can be found here.

Video:

You can view this video on YouTube to watch in Hi-Def.

Volkert "Oakley" Jürgens - Catching up with the family

Originally from Germany, I emigrated to New Zealand in 2003. The generous NZ government funded my PhD in Computer Science in Christchurch, and now I'm a software developer in Wellington.

About a year ago I became obsessed with my ancestors. Yes, I knew we could easily trace the family back a few hundred years. But who were these people? How did they live? What did they do? What did they feel? And what influence did these people that I never met have on my life?

Video:

You can view this video on YouTube to watch in Hi-Def.

Drew Broadley - SPCA Special

Drew has loved animals since childhood, with everything from his Nana's Budgie to his wife's horses. Often forming bonds with animals, people often comment about never seeing their pet behave like that with anyone before (often they would pee in excitement). Once settled after purchasing his first house, he could finally get a pet of his own and a dog was first-choice. Drew's wife had a family who often adopted animals from shelters, and had told me of the great bond you have with an animal who has previously been mal-treated. This was a great idea, what could possibly go wrong?

Outside of juggling time with wife, dog and baby, Drew keeps busy with a few ideas and hopes to be able to come back next time to talk about the trials, errors and resistance of unleashing paperless receipts on the world.

Neil Plimmer - Energise our Cityscape

Neil Plimmer represented New Zealand abroad in Washington, Rome and Canberra before heading up the Government’s tourism agency for many years.

In later life his love of the arts has come to the fore; he is Chair of the Wellington Sculpture Trust.

Video:

You can view this video on YouTube to watch in Hi-Def.

Owen Evans - We're not in Guatemala now Dr Ropata: Get over your 1st world problems

Owen Evans is a software developer currently employed by Xero to be a Chief Architect, according to his wife and 19month old daughter that means he goes 'type type type'.

Hailing from the UK or more specifically a small place called Wales, he has always held the belief that no matter what happens there are always people worse off and won't complain about anything (because POMs don't whinge)

He's in envy of his father who has always done great things for people, and in his 5 minutes he'll try and tell you all about them.

Video:

You can view this video on YouTube to watch in Hi-Def.

Mike Riversdale - Paul Henry wants me to be your Governor-General

You are not alone.

There are those amongst you that are not from here.
Not "those", they're obvious, with their funny ways and they are definitely not even trying to be a Kiwi. No, it's not them that you should look at, it's the sneaky buggers that have managed to slip in past your hard working Border Guards to go on to take your jobs, women and the seat at the Stadium.

I will be calling out one particularly furtive joker for your entertainment.

In my spare time I enjoy the smiles that comes from introducing Google Apps to companies of all sizes around New Zealand from the finest of Wellington's suburbs, Miramar.

Video:

You can view this video on YouTube to watch in Hi-Def.

Jon Brown - In The Long Run We Are All Dead Creative

Jon Brown is a game designer, and has been doing his best to make children, and adults, part with their pocket money for over 15 years. It isn't all fast cars, jet-setting and sleepless nights, but they're the parts that makes for the best stories.

'Tenacity', 'determination' and 'a-memory-like-a-spiteful-elephant' are key words in Jon's work ethic - the back burner is where many of the best, most rounded ideas are being formed. In this talk he will use one of his more scientifically complicated (improbable) inventions as an illustration of the process he likes to call 'In the long run we are all dead creative'.

Video:

You can view this video on YouTube to watch in Hi-Def.

Ignite Wellington #4

It's time for another inspirational Ignite night! The fourth Ignite Wellington will be held on Tuesday 8 November 2011 at the Paramount Theatre.

Come along to this free event to be inspired, amused, educated and amazed by an array of Wellington speakers -- and have fun at the Ignite Contest where you can let your creative juices flow. We might run out of seats so register today for your free ticket and to go into spot prize draw on the night.

Tickets are free but do bring along some coinage to make a donation to our selected charity - the Child Cancer Foundation.

What: Ignite Wellington #4
When: Tuesday 8 November, 2011
Time: Arrive from 6pm for the Ignite Contest, speakers at 7:30 pm until approx 9:30 pm
Where: Paramount Theatre, 25 Courtenay Place, Wellington

Free registration!

We are looking forward to seeing you there!
Amie, Catherine, Kirk and Siobhan

Speakers

Brenda Wallace - Oversharing geeks on wheels
Christine Brooks - Improv and other drugs
Drew Broadley - SPCA Special
Edward Murrell - Chasing merino: a year of New Zealand made
Jeramiah Ross - Life out on the Waves
John Robson - Being Reasonable
Jon Brown - In The Long Run We Are All Dead Creative
Mike Eager - Poems from a long walk for freedom
Mike Riversdale - Paul Henry wants me to be your Governor-General
Neil Plimmer - Energise our Cityscape
Owen Evans - We're not in Guatemala now Dr Ropata: Get over your 1st world problems
Samantha Hannah - *Why* do Wellingtonians have a fascination with black?
Volkert "Oakley" Jürgens - Catching up with the family

Ignite #4 November 2011 Sponsors

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