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Ignite Newcastle 2 by Codeworks Connect
Posted by: Rob Lavender on Friday, September 30th, 2011
The second Ignite event was held in Martha’s Vineyard for drinks and then a very warm conference room in the Vermont hotel. There was a great buzz about the place as soon as I walked in so I was looking forward to seeing what the Ignite format was all about, and I wasn’t disappointed. Everyone smooshed for an hour or so and then ventured upstairs to the conference room. The format for Ignite is to get a lot of different people to present on a subject of their choice with the only stipulation being that they're limited to 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds. It makes for a fast paced and diverse event, and to add a little more zip a panel of randomly selected judges picked an overall winner and runner-up.
The speakers:
- Tristan Watson – Love your Larder – Why your idea sucks (and what to do about it)
- Dan Gilmore – Atomhawk – Immersive Experiences
- Jonathon Gold – Finance Tree – Raising Investment
- Peter Hirst – every1speaks – Easter eggs
- Daniel Kolodziej – Poll me – Energy Harvesting Devices
- David Erasmus – Cubate Ltd – The Road
- Jo York – Ki Media – Sue’s-ability
- Paul Mander – NEPO – You CAN sell to local councils
- Paul Lancaster – Project North East – The Domino Project
- Gary Glozier – TH_NK – TH_NK 10; a creative’s perspective
- Ross Linnett – UKC Design – Advantages of dyslexia
Tristan Watson – Love your Larder – Why your idea sucks (and what to do about it)
Very inspiring talk about getting your idea out there then worry about refining it later. Just get it out there and see if anyone is interested in what you’re doing. If Tristan started out with Love Your Larder now he’d use an online service like Shopify to get the first shop up and add products manually, getting his site up in 2 weeks to see if the idea had traction, rather than the months and months he spent refining the first online version.
Dan Gilmore – Atomhawk – Immersive Experiences
Great to be reminded of some cool immersive technology that’s out there and what the future holds. I like augmented reality, if you’ve not seen it then I’d recommend googling about it to see a demonstration.
Unfortunately for all it’s promise for me it’s still not delivering. Over 10 years ago I tested out a headset on a virtual reality game, it was a strange experience but the technology was already able to do some amazing things. Since then it doesn’t seem to have come very far. Don’t get me wrong there’s some amazing demos but I’m left scratching my head as to why it’s still not more main stream.
Daniel Kolodziej – Poll me – Energy Harvesting Devices
I liked what Daniel talked about, as a side interest he has a passion for energy harvesting devices, a little device that can sit in the sole of your shoe and generate energy to power things like your mobile phone. Inspired by the idea of Tom’s shoes, buy 1 pair of shoes and Tom donates 1 pair to needy people in Africa, how about Daniel’s shoes. Link that to micropayment via mobile phone in Africa to help support people establish businesses Daniel suggested that there could be some interesting solutions and cross pollination of ideas. The specifics of what that idea was a little vague however, but what do you expect in 5 minutes and 20 slides.
David Erasmus – Cubate Ltd – The Road
Kind of like seeing someones holiday snaps, David and his close group of friends have taken some amazing expeditions around the globe in a minibus, in one form or another.
After all of the mad adventures David had been on he reflected why so many people have dreams that are never fulfilled and yet within this tight knit group of friends they were living their dreams. The conclusion that David reached was about intamacy and being fulfilled. You can only be intimate by being vulnerable and vulnerability is hard. Most of us do all we can to avoid being vulnerable with people, thereby mitigating against getting hurt. But, it is only through intimacy that we can really be known, and it is only by being known, truly known for who we are, can we be truly satisfied.
Jo York – Ki Media – Sue’s-ability
Really inspired by Jo’s talk to find examples of how to make things better by observing how people close to us interact with online media.
Sue is Jo’s mum who had been unable to overcome the barrier to accessing the online world until she started to use and iPad. Since then Jo was a 24/7 tech support as her mum struggled to get to grips with user issues that many of us simply take for granted.
Paul Lancaster – Project North East – The Domino Project
This project is well worth looking at more closely. I couldn’t really tell you what it was about, self publishing I think, but it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on.
Gary Glozier – TH_NK – TH_NK 10; a creative’s perspective
It was nice to get the perspective of a large agency at this type of event. TH_NK is a great success story for Newcastle and the North East, I really enjoyed hearing about how it all started and the journey that they’ve been on since. It seems that the spin off benefits to the tech community that have developed as talented people have passed through the doors of TH_NK has also been a massive boon for the region.
Ross Linnett – UKC Design – Advantages of dyslexia
I didn’t realise that so many amazingly gifted people were dyslexia, from Da Vinci and Albert Einstine to Robbie Williams. The basic message was about how people think differently and not to dismiss people just because on the surface they may not think in a conventional way. Put another way, employ at least one person that has dyslexia in your business if you want to have a business that thinks outside of the box.
In case you're wondering Jo York was the deserving winner.
To find out more
http://connection.codeworks.net/2011/01/11/think-and-drink-brings-you-ig...
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