Archive for the 'Seattle' Category

(Seattle) Full day courses - interested?

January 22nd, 2008

Hi folks - you may know I make most of my living performing lectures and teaching workshops. I love to teach and it provides a solid income to support all the writing I do here and in books.

After 4 years of doing this exclusively for hire by fancy companies, universities and big conferences, I’m exploring offering my best courses to the public, so anyone interested can throw tomatoes at me in person.

What I’m looking to find out is:

1) Are there enough people interested in Seattle?
2) Which course I should offer first?
3) How much would you (or your company) pay for a day of training?

If you live in the Seattle area, please give the short survey a spin. Will take you exactly 45 seconds. Cheers!

If I can get this running here in my hometown, I’ll happily take the show on the road to other cities if, and where, there’s enough interest.

Posted in Seattle, Teaching/Training | No Comments »

(Seattle) next ignite, tommorow night

August 7th, 2007

O’reilly’s ignite event, a fun gathering of geekish entertainment, is on again - same venue (Capital Hill’s CHAC), but an entirely new round of 5 minute talks.

I always have fun at these things and highly recommend them - have a few drinks, watch people scramble to do a presentation in 300 seconds, and meet the local tech community all at the same time. The talks this time include:

Make Art Not Content, Scotto Moore
Hacking Chocolate, Shawn Murphy
Small medicine: Nanotechnology and biology, Deepak Singh
Run the Government: A Primer for Online Citizens, Sarah Schacht
No, not skin: Epidemiology for the layman, Maegan Ashworth
How to buy a new car, Rob Gruhl

and more.

When: Tomorrow, Wed. August 8th, 8:30pm (6:30pm for the Make event)
Where: CHAC

I can’t make it this time, but I’ll back for the next one.

Posted in Seattle | No Comments »

Seattle Bizjam conference, this weekend: Recommended

June 5th, 2007

My friends at the awesome business networking group Biznik are running their first large scale event this weekend, called BizJam. It’s aimed at entrepreneurs, small business owners and anyone who works, or hopes to work, independently.

Admission is very cheap for an event of this kind: $110 for the daytime events, and $130 for the whole thing till 2am.

Here are some of the highlights:

* 14 workshops & 5 panel discussions (Full schedule)
* Catered gourmet lunch
* Networking with 300 other indie professionals
* Promote your business: trade tables, sponsorship & advertising opps available
* Biznik indie business awards
* Indie fashion show featuring 8 local designers
* Biznik 2.0 Launch Party with aerialist, Beverly Sobelman, full no-host bar & DJs

I’ll be doing the keynote at 9:30am, talking about topics from The myths of Innovation.

I know the organizers and I highly recommend signing up - This is a great networking event at a super cheap price. Hope to see you there.

Schedule, agenda and details or Register now.

Posted in Seattle | No Comments »

Seattle ignite, tommorow night

April 4th, 2007

Seattle ignite is a fun tech-sector event run by Brady Forest from O’Reilly, and tommorow’s 3rd session looks to be the best one yet.

Starting at 6:30pm there’s a paper airplane making contest (open to all) hosted by Bre from Make, followed by 5 minute presentations starting at 8:30pm - I’ll be doing one about attention and sex and the lineup of other talks looks great, from airplane engine design to Naturopathics to life in prison.

Hope to see you there - details and location.

Posted in Seattle | No Comments »

Seattle: Ignite, Tuesday 8:30pm

February 12th, 2007

The best new tech sector event in Seattle is the Ignite series Brady Forest started a few months ago. It’s an open submission series of 5 minute talks, and it’s fun. The fact that it takes place in a bar on capital hill doesn’t hurt, and if you can get there early you can take part in a fun Make magazine competition (think flying eggs) run by Bre Petis.

Details, directions and agenda here. Unless you have plans, go.

Posted in Seattle | No Comments »

Mindcamp 3.0: report

November 13th, 2006

Seattle mindcamp was this past weekend and surprise: they let me in!

Here’s the short report:

The good:

New format rocked. The innovative organizers chose to take a risk and have pre-filled out forms for sessions. It made a dramatic difference: the quality of session titles and descriptions was very high. Encouraging people to plan paid off, without losing any of the free-form vibe or last minute idea possibilities. A lesson to all future unconference organizers.
Fun randomness. This is why i come - I met a female bodybuilder, talked to some friendly burners, shook hands with Tom Bihn. Awesome. it’s these non-tech interactions that interest me most. Chad McDaniel suggested a non-geek camp, same people, but non-geek topics, would be a more mind opening experience, and I agree. The Discovery Slam Bryan Zug and I ran nailed this (pun intended, thx to street performer guy), but it was just one session.
Ran a fun session on the innovation book. Had a great crowd, exchanged ideas, laughed and had good times all around. Many of the myths I heard are already in the book, but heard some comments that I’m still thinking about (If you have more thoughts, let em fly). Thanks to all that were there. Also sat in on Scott Ruthfield’s excellent session on innovation in big orgs.
Food, environment, lack of rules. The unstructured vibe always makes things fun, since as soon as it gets dull or I can’t find anything, I can make something up, or head guiltlessly home. Everything else was taken care of - kudos to organizers.

The complaints:

Some process problems. The new system, as expected, had some kinks. Sessions started late and without their organizers (they didn’t know they were up first).
Crappy pitches. I heard so many bad pitches for start-ups, projects and people, it drove me nuts - it was embarrassing. I did a lightning talk late in the day on how to pitch an idea, which might not have been useful, but sure was therapeutic. I think you know the start-up seriousness of a crowd by the average quality of overheard pitches.
Few projectors / wi-fi. There was no warning, so for Ario’s UI design session, we assumed the requested projector would be there. No dice. Session canceled and we had to send 30 people on their way (some hung out for small group critiques). I don’t care much for wi-fi at conferences, but like projectors, session organizers need to know what to expect before we show up in the room.
Are 3 word intros worth an hour? It’s an unconference tradition, but Donte, Ario and I came up with less time consumptive alternatives: Idea: Let people who want an intro put a photo with their 3 words (or whatever they want on it) up on an ftp server. Have that projected in slide show mode before sessions, during meals, on the website before the day, and any other time when passive media has some value.
Where are the ladies? Kudos and all my platonic love to those that were there (all 8 of you, yes I counted), but there’s something bogus about mindcamp if it’s really “boy-geek camp”. Making mind camp less “geek-camp” (encouraging artists, writers, designers, to come) would not only make my brain happy, but would balance the gender ratios too. But perhaps this is the seed for a different event… (Sex camp!). No, I mean, roughly, Renaissance-mind camp. If you’re into this, leave a comment.