If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers.

Ignite, a community sponsored by O’Reilly, was started in Seattle in 2006 by Brady Forrest and Bre Pettis. Since then 100s of 5 minute talks have been given across the world. There are thriving Ignite communities in Seattle, Portland, Paris, and NYC.

AND NOW THERE IS AN IGNITE COMMUNITY IN COLUMBUS, OHIO!

Columbus’ first Ignite will be November 13, 2008 at the Columbus Robotics Society (1481 Showcase Dr., Columbus, OH 43212) from 6pm - 9pm. And if you want to give a presentation, please submit your idea to [masked]. We will announce the list of presentations in the near future.

IgniteCbus

While we don’t yet have the final lineup, here’s a sample of what will be presented at Ignite Columbus:

• Bryce Glass - Algorithyms for Interesting: How, exactly, do social media sites decide what’s good and what’s not?
  
• Jason Blanton - How to be a blog rockstar in 5 minutes or less
  
• Brian Link - A satirical look at how technology and social media have made us all seemingly take shortcuts in life… and that it’s a good thing
  
• Eve Hermann - Temperate Broadleaf Deciduous Forest & Arc of Appalachia Preserve System
  
• Arvind Venkataramani - The parable of the totaled saab, or, what is sustainability?
  
• Dan Rockwell - Backcasting with Japanese Animation: If your curious about the future of anything, look to small screen of Japanese Animation- here is a playground of future envisioning that is more accurate than you think.
  
• Dan Harris - Six Degrees of Dan: Website where Dan has a bucket list of people he wants to meet. He’ll ask his readers for an introduction, then write about his experience with meeting the folks.
  
• Alvin Borromeo - Let’s Hug it Out, Columbus: My hairbrained scheme to supply local TV stations with locally produced scripted shows for air on multicast channels
  
• Matthew Leasure - The Nature of Urbanism: Highlighting the current sustainable design movement in Columbus and offering up ideas for the future of our cities.
  
• Mike McBride - 5 minutes on ways to overcome shyness and network with the best of ‘em!: Do you wish you could have an ever-growing network of friends/peers/professionals to call on when you need help with a project? Is your naturally tendency towards shyness and your introverted personality keeping you from that? We’ll give you a couple of ways to look at networking/friendship to help you not only overcome these traits, but use them to your advantage.