Ok I started this tradition after Startup Weekend and so now here it is for Ignite 2- the take-away’s post!

Ignite 2 take-away’s.

First it rocked.  There, that’s it.  It was bigger and better than the first Ignite on so many levels.  Our attendance sky rocketed, from 35 folks for our first Ignite to over 125 for the second.  We had real sponsors not just me and Alvin chipping in pizza and pop money to feed folks.

Lextant’s venue ruled.  I was concerned a bit toward the end on where to put everyone but it worked out nicely.

Organized.  After the first Ignite, we had a feel for what would be needed and began to prepare for a much larger event.  We had to pay for people to help organize the event but it was well worth it- we had a sign in book, name tags, people were greeted, space provided, free wifi-food-beer.  Folks, free beer is a rare, rare, thing in town, that alone probably made this event special for some.

Special thanks to the Lextant crew members here that helped me put this together- Debbie our lab hostess who just made stuff work, Ashley and our hostess who guided folks in when typically the whole building locks down at 530PM, Chris for saying yes to this event venue in the first place, and for putting up additional $$$ as part of the “Lextant doesn’t throw lame parties” Act of 2001.

Also thanks to Chris for providing the PA system. Jess for making signs, Wyatt & Justine for helping me figure out find activities we really didn’t end up doing but hey it was there.  And Jim, Kendra, Leah, Katie, Lauren, Anna, and Lauren for workin the crowd and basically helping out where ever.

Of course props to EdgeCase for stepping up with the big YES on sponsorship, making sure we all got fed.

Maurice at MotionDrift for providing incredible pro video recording of the entire thing.

Alvin for being our deck wrangler and key communicator to presenters, not to mention taking some lovely pictures of the event.

And of course we have to thank the presenters for coming out, getting up there and giving us their 5 minutes of brain space on whatever they presented.

We’ve received a lot of email following the event- big thanks and kudos to future sponsors and ideas to nitpicks and things to change next time.  I’ve had people tell me that the evening was a great “brain tasting” and for some it was completely awesome and they had no idea it was going to be as big as it was.

Ignite Columbus will continue to evolve and refine.  Future venues will no doubt have to get bigger and bigger.  Its a nice problem to have really, i’m excited to see what comes next.

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Cut to the chase Dan, give us your real take-away’s… FINE!

For the next Ignite I hope to see less sales pitches, I think its important to note that in some ways everyone presenting is pitching something.  In general though I want to see more inspiration and less sales pitch action.

More networking.  People want more time to hook up and talk.  At first I think yes, but then I think double the food budget and tripple the beer.  Next time KEG, I wanted to do KEG this time around but was talked out of it.

Less presentations. With more networking, we can’t have the same amount of presentations or we risk turning the event into a 4 hour affair.  I’d probably want to see the number presentations go down to 8, with a few fun raffles like we did before.  Inject fun stuff etc.

Respect the mic but resist judgement in advance.  I really don’t want to slap categories and screen presentations before they go up.  And typically it’d be hard to I think just because of the volunteer nature of the event, some presentations arrive right down to the minute before they get presented.  I see Ignite as a kind of open mic deal.  Everyone should have their chance to address the mob with something, anything for 5 minutes.  If you rock out, you’ll know it, if you die on a vine, you’ll know it, you’ll figure it out, learn, improve, get better.  This is not the community that will hold back judgement.  If you rocked people will tell you, follow you on twitter or vice versa.

Games are fun. I have to say Mary did a great job handling that presentation she had never seen before.

Not a bad MC, nuff said.

Channel4 never hurts.  It never hurts to have mainstream media show up, plop down and start snagging some video of your event.. now when/where we gonna see that?

A fun viral video is helpful.  Every event should have its promo bits. The downfall spoof video for Ignite worked perfectly in communicating to people something is gonna happen- go read up on it, get more facts, come and enjoy.

RSVP’s via the Cbus Tech Life meetup page, very handy.  Gotta know how many folks are coming, had to up the pizza order there mid way thru the week as attendance grew past 100. Also a nice place to see feedback from the event and give sponsors a general feel for “who” is attending.

All are welcome… expect underage teens.  I had to turn down about 30 under age kids because of the beer/drinking thing.  Something we don’t really think about is legal responsibility of the venue and what you’re about to do.  Next time we’ll figure out how to get those kids at the event.  I didn’t want to spring a scenario on Lextant that could lead to an incident- so I made the judgement call to say no, because 1- we were at max capacity as is, and 2- we’d have to card/monitor/do something about the underage drinking ordeal.

So in a nutshell, it was a great, people loved it, many have told me of new connections made, and how in general it was an awesome time.  Like any event, there’s always things to tweak and fix to make the next one even better.

If you’d like to be part of the organization of our next Ignite please dm me @floozyspeak or @wyliemac on twitter and we’ll talk.

Soon we’ll be putting video + presentations of the event online.  Video is still being edited.

Coverage of the event can be found here:

http://columbustech.blogspot.com/2009/01/ignite-columbus-2.html

Pics: here, here and here

If you attended and blogged about it, let us know, add your blog post url to the comments!