I had a chance to present at the latest Ignite Boulder event, which was held over at CU, and put on by Andrew Hyde. The idea behind Ignite is to give a presentation you’d normally take 90 minutes to get through, and do it in 5. It’s 20 slides, auto-advancing every 15 seconds, no matter what you’re doing, or what else is going on (I had a dog walk through mine). It’s all crazy, for sure, but it’s also entertaining and a ton of fun. No surprise, I presented about copywriting for startups - how to do it, and how to do it well. That’s my passion, and even though I took a goofy path to get to my point, I think I brought some disruption and provided some value.
This post serves as my (terribly late) review of the night - my three big impressions from being a part of it:
1. it was a blast. really. we had a great crowd, we had free beer, and everyone was into the presentations. there was great energy in the room, and it made it that much more fun to get up and talk.
2. it was a great place to make connections. that’s partly because I presented, and thus, got to meet people who came up to say hi. but it’s also because it was a packed room of like-minded people, who were primed to chat. I met a lot of new friends, got a lot of new cards, and followed a whole bunch of new people.
3. it made me a better writer. yep. I didn’t expect this one. but somewhere along the way, whether it was compiling 5-minutes of what was absolutely vital to success in my profession, whether it was the act of presenting this material out loud (and owning it like I never had before), or whether it was engaging with the audience around my passion, I came to a new understanding of exactly what I do. since then, I’ve not only been inspired to do more work, but had the inspiration to do better work.
For an event like that, to not only be entertaining and to give out free beer, but to change the way I see my profession and give me some contacts to move that profession forward, is very cool. I highly suggest you attend the next one if you’re in town, and I highly suggest you get up on that stage at some point.
Here’s an HD video of my presentation from the event… you can see an extended one with text from my slides here, and you can see the presentations from all the other awesome presenters here.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Awesome!!
And hey….I read your blog!
Brian - I really enjoyed your presentation and thought you did a good job with the dog.
KATH: thanks, Kath! and yeah, I know you read… thanks for stopping by to comment!
JASON: thank you - with a presentation like that, you can forget about being composed… it’s all about adaptation.
Bri, that presentation was great. I think you planted the dog, what are the chances a dog is going to walk through as you’re talking about timing? That was awesome. My only bit of constructive criticism is you should try not to move around so much as you’re talking, it’s distracting for your audience. Overall, I’m impressed.
HOLLY: Hey, Holl… thanks for stopping by!
The dog was not planted. I swear it. But yeah, it was good timing.
Good call on moving around. I was giving the presentation with only the audience in mind - if I knew it was going on video (and knew a little more about how to shoot good video), I probably would have done that different.
Bri-Bri, I thought that was great! My class thought that you were a weatherman and thank goodness I had the volume turned down!
ASIA: Hey… thanks to you too for stopping by!
Glad you liked the presentation… sorry to swear so much in front of the kids - I didn’t mean to, it just sorta came out.
And hey, being compared to the weatherman ain’t so bad…. I’m moving up in the world!