Last night I got the chance to attend my second Ignite Seattle evening at the King Cat Theater. Ignite is a quarterly event where participants sign up to give five minute speeches on the geek topics of their choosing. The “five minute” in “five minute speeches” is literal; speakers present a maximum of twenty slides which rotate automatically every fifteen seconds. It’s amazing how dense and insightful such short speeches can be, and how fascinating an evening can be when smart people fill five-minute windows with their ideas, one after another. People are building computer interfaces for cerebral palsy patients for the cost of a DIY hacker’s grocery list. They are harvesting energy from the wind using over-the-counter kites and bicycle parts. They’re making elaborate monsters out of papier mâché or turning their garages into metalcasting foundries. And so on.
I spent part of last summer traveling in India doing photojournalism with Salaam Garage, and last night I cheered on its founder, Amanda Koster, as she gave one of the Ignite talks. She explored one of the lingering side effects of the Vietman war – unexploded munitions that remain scattered around the country, still endangering life and limb. At the current rate of discovery and cleanup, this legacy of war will remain an active local concern for an estimated 300 years. Three hundred years – that was not a typo. The participants in the most recent Salaam Garage trip explored this issue, and I can’t wait to see their work.
I also bumped into a fellow software developer I met while interviewing around town last fall – Brett Witt from Vittana Foundation, one of my favorite local startups. Vittana uses the power of microfinance and online networking to bring student loans to the developing world. Microfinance was also a topic last night in a presentation about Kiva, a Bay Area company doing work analogous to Vittana’s. But where Kiva enables microloans to entrepreneurs, Vittana aids aspiring students in the developing world. Brett sold me on using HAML, which Nate and I are experimenting with for a promotional site we started building this week.
So much great stuff happens in Seattle that it’s easy to miss out on a lot of it. I just wanted to spotlight some organizations who are doing fantastic work and encouraging us all to participate. One of these days I’ll twist the arm of an Urban Influence designer or developer into giving an Ignite talk. Mark my words!