The premise: speakers submit talks on any subject they could possibly imagine. They have to create 20 slides projected for a total of 15 seconds each, no exception. Quite literally when their five minutes are up, they're done. Ignite is a purely volunteer-run event originating in Seattle (but is spreading like wild-fire across the world) and sponsored mostly by O'Reilly (yes, the acclaimed tech book publisher) and Make: Technology on Your Time. It's held every three months or so at the King Cat Theater on 6th downtown. The attendees were numbering in the few hundreds for a while, but now beginning to grow exponentially. At Ignite 10 there were somewhere around 800 people gathering to revel in their geekiness and tonight you can be part of the action. more ›

Fans of the Ignite Seattle tech event series who are less enthused about the fact that everyone's a fan of Ignite Seattle should probably check out Thingamajiggr. Thingamajiggr sounds like it's Ignite + tickets, somewhat. Organizer Brady Forrest of O'Reilly Radar says that there will be some short talks at the beginning, but it's more of a social party than Ignite. There will be SMS game experiments going on, there are DJs scheduled, some art, and a "Hacker Magic Show." Our kind of event. It's this Friday 8pm-2am and tickets are $15 (discount code "thingamaparty"--buy now because there are limited tickets and it's going to be announced in other places soon.) more ›

Tonight is the fourth Ignite Seattle tech event and since the two previous ones that we attended were so mind-explodingly great, we recommend it without reservation. Lots of drunk technology guys and entrepreneurs will be mixing with each other and taking in the super short presentations that super smart people are scheduled to give. more ›

Shh. Come over here. Yeah, over here. Keep your voice down. Tonight is Ignite Seattle, that tech event at CHAC. No, I don't know why you haven't heard much about this one--this is a stealth Ignite, apparently, which is great because every one so far has been packed beyond standing room only, but also great and really fun. There were practically people hanging from the rafters last time in the Upper Level, so, don't like tell a lot of people. Just you and- Shh. Keep it down. Yes, you can bring the other geeks from work, but tell them not to tell anyone else. The Make Challenge is paper airplanes and it starts at 6:30. The first round of talks is Bruce Leban from Google talking about his time in prison, Alex Hopmann talking about airplane engines, Jordan Schwartz about bee-keeping, Karen Anderson on workplace survival tips, Brian McConnel on participatory translation, Candace McNaughton on health hacks, Carl Coryell on nomad tech and Scott Berkun on attention and sex. That starts at 8:30. And then there's another round. Remember, all the talks are five minutes long. Oh, shit. Hey, Ignite Seattle, what's up? We were just talking about the, uh, nice weather. Isn't it, uh, nice? more ›

CASTING CALL: Local director Garrett Bennett is looking for extras to cast in his independent film The Spy & the Sparrow. more ›

It's a bar, it's a gallery, it's a cafe, it's an installation art space, it's probably going to become part of the Belltown circuit that should involve Roq La Rue, BLVD, and the Sculpture Park. It's the McLeod Residence. more ›

The premise of last night's technology event Ignite Seattle was simple. Get into groups and spend a half an hour building bridges out of popsicle sticks, stand on them until they break, and then listen to a bunch of super short presentations. It worked. We learned so much about happenings in and around the Seattle tech world we feel like we leveled up like twenty times. Really, we had high expectations --enough so that we became a sponsor-- and those expectations were consistently exceeded: We thought it would be well-attended and it was packed. We thought the geeks would build a few popsicle-stick bridges that could withstand the weight of a team member and almost all of them did (although not the bridge that we helped with - sorry guys). Most importantly, we thought the presentations would be short enough to not get boring and they were universally exciting and full of ideas and we didn't want a single one of them to end so quickly. more ›

>>>DORKBOT, 7:30pm. We love the name, but saying that they plan to "discuss their innovative approach to immersive, participatory entertainment" doesn't hide the fact that this will be geeks talking about videogames. Free, but only if you know the secret code: 'Knock knock, who's there?' 'Um, dorks?' 'Come in!' more ›

Seattle needs real world, technology-focused get togethers. Desperately. Microsoft does some things and so do some of the other larger shops in town but they tend not to be general attendance-type events. There's Mindcamp. There's the Penny Arcade thing, sort of. There might be a few others we're not thinking of right now, but come on, we feel like we should be able to name a dozen or so events. more ›