new economy

Ignite Boise Sets Boise On Fire, Again (Intellectually)

By Sharon Fisher, 7-18-09

Thursday’s second installment of Ignite Boise, an evening of performance art produced and presented by volunteers, “sold out” its allotment of 600 free tickets to the Egyptian in just two hours, compared with several days for the first installment, held in March.

According to a non-scientific survey the next day on the Ignite Boise website, the most popular presentations were on feminism, the Eagles, and using the Internet’s social media capabilities more intelligently.Other presentations included the value of bartering, why we should all go live on the beach, and the virtues of beer and Turkish coffee.

Idaho government has started paying attention as well. Boise Mayor Dave Bieter proclaimed Thursday to be ”Ignite Boise Day.” Another attendee was the Legislature’s Joint Finance Appropriations Committee Co-Chair Senator Dean Cameron, R-Rupert, arguably the most visible legislator on Twitter (where the event is heavily promoted). Presenting on the value of social media was John Foster, not only senior advisor and communications director for Idaho Congressman Walt Minnick, but also the father of a baby girl less than a week old (who was also in attendance).

“What do we use this medium for? Crap,” Foster said, referring to Tweets about what people were having for lunch or going out drinking. “We don’t use it for something meaningful,” such as more discussion of world events. (Though, despite the thunderous applause his words elicited, the primary talk at the end of the event was the post-party at Opa.)

Ignite is sort of a syndicated performance-art-in-a-box group. It captures the “Hey, my mom’s got a barn!” inside a lot of people and helps provide a way to focus it and use it. It’s like a company team-building exercise for people who don’t work in the same company—at least, not yet.

Ignite started in Seattle in 2006, and since then has been held in a number of cities worldwide. Shows are currently being held in Reno, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Bloomington, Orlando, Denver, Salt Lake City, and a variety of Australian cities. In fact, the sixth Ignite show in Portland was being held Thursday night as well, but didn’t have as many attendees as Boise’s, Boise organizers reported.

“Ignite captures the best of geek culture in a series of five-minute speed presentations on topics ranging from The Best Way to Buy a Car to Hacking Chocolate,” explains the website. “Imagine that you’re on stage in front of an audience of hundreds of people, doing a five-minute presentation using a slide deck that auto-forwards every 15 seconds, whether you’re ready or not. What would you do? What would you say?”

As with the first Ignite Boise, a number of the presentations were by and for geeks, including entrepreneurship and making Boise a center for the geosciences. However, many more were based on how people should live their lives, whether it was Rich Taylor’s on how we should all live on the beach—or whatever our personal dream lifestyle was; Jesse DR Murphy’s on “Being Danger Ready,” or prepared and capable of dealing with the unexpected; or Stephanie Worrell’s on how we should all have secret lives and, conversely, reveal them to others.

Organizers and presenters included urban designers, state employees, public relations professionals—basically, all they seemed to have in common is that they’re all on Twitter, which was burning up with people live-Tweeting the event, thanks to temporary wireless hubs donated by Boise company Cradlepoint Technology. A plan to live stream the presentations on the Internet didn’t work, however.

The value of the events is not so much the presentations themselves, but the group bonding that takes place during the shared experience. Catch phrases from the first event, such as the palindrome “Yo! Banana Boy!” still come up, and no one who attended Thursday’s event will ever think of the music of the Eagles in quite the same way again.

A third event is planned but not yet announced.

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