Ignite Boulder. Oh, how it has grown.

From less than two hundred people in a smart room on the CU campus to a nearly sold-out show at the Boulder Theater (only 12 tickets were left when the sales ended), Ignite Boulder has become one hell of an event.

After Ignite Boulder 5 and its exceptional performances, I knew I had to try to submit another topic. I had gotten lots of suggestions from friends and plenty of reassurance that I couldn’t go wrong with another submission. This time, it was Ben’s suggestion to try some Swedish in my presentation that really got me going. Thus it was born: “Bork Bork Bork: Swedish 101 for Foreigners.”

I was beyond excited but nervous. Last time I spoke in front of no more than 500 people, and this time it could’ve topped 800. Thankfully, it went as well (if not better) than I had hoped for — people laughed where I wanted them to (and at some times, in places I didn’t expect), the crowd learned a little bit of Swedish, even my father came to watch, and I didn’t screw up!

I have to say that this was probably my favorite Ignite, and it was not because I felt like I succeeded — that’s just the icing on the cake. There were some fantastic presentations that exceeded my expectations and absolutely blew my mind. I laughed, learned, and overall, I really enjoyed myself.

It’s so hard to pick favorites, highs or lows, surprises, etc., from Ignite Boulder. I loved Ef Rodriguez’s Sacrificial Deck in which he showed the crowd that you can forget a line or two and still pull off an amazing presentation. Plus, he sang!

Ef wasn’t alone in entertaining the crowd with music. Mountain Standard Time played a few sets, and we were all happy to help them out a bit — turns out their equipment got jacked a few weeks ago. I hope we raised some cash for them.

It was nice to finally meet Jen Yu, who presented on “Food Porn: Behind the Lens,” but it’s too bad I didn’t get to talk to Sari Levi more because I thought her presentation on “The Alternative, Alternative Energy: My Million-Dollar Idea” — capitalizing on America’s obesity — was brilliant.

I laughed a lot thanks to Ryan Wanger (“Our Princess is In Another Castle”), Vanessa Schneider (“The Things They Don’t Tell You About a DUI”), Luke Tilsley (“Have You Kissed Like a Trobiand Native?”), Heather Clisby (“Screw Logic: An Unbelievable Look at Bizarre Beliefs”), George Smith (“How to Master Debate”), and Dave Burdick (“Everything I Need to Know About Journalism I Learned From Ghostbusters”).  From Blowseph and crude jokes involving Australia to video game nerds and how many people believe the sun revolves around the earth, I got my fair share of laughter from these presentations.

But we all learned a lot from Naomi Meredith (“Making Friends and Insulting People – The Shakespearean Way”), Cristina Sagray (“Classic Literature Through The Eyes of a Teenage Chick Flick”), Todd Berger (“Business Earth”), Kaley Sutton (who presented on Burning Man), and Michael Brown (“Reward and Risk”). It was dead silent as Michael Brown described life and death on Mt. Everest through his experiences as an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker — we closed with some clips of his work, a perfect way to end the best Ignite Boulder yet.

Oh yeah… and I almost forgot! The volunteers were great as always. They handled the huge line really well, and there were no technical problems. The whole thing went so smoothly!

“Sätter eld på Boulder” is how you would say “set Boulder on fire” in Swedish. And that’s just what happened at Ignite Boulder 6!

Ignite Boulder has become one of the most entertaining and popular tech events here in town. But it’s no longer the big tech-scene secret it was the first few times around; I actually heard people talking about it on Pearl Street the night before (“See you tomorrow! Goin’ to Ignite?” Hells yeah!”).

After attending Ignite Boulder 2 and Ignite Boulder 3, I had submitted a topic that was accepted for  presentation: “Confessions of a NiteRide Driver” (name altered just slightly to protect the innocent). By the end of the voting, I’d made it to 3rd place. All this talk about wanting to present and thinking I could present would finally be challenged — could I present in front of almost two hundred people?

On top of that, it ended up being far more than two hundred people. Despite the inability to bring beer into the venue, organizer Andrew Hyde decided that a large venue where we could include more people was more important than being able to have beer. Instead, we had a pre-party at The b.side Lounge and secured some sweet deals for sushi afterwards, and held Ignite at the 475 (more or less)-capacity Chem 140 lecture hall on the CU campus. Suddenly it really became a test of my nerves.

You see, I’m not really a public speaker. I get pretty nervous in front of that many people. I’m much better at interacting with people in small groups or separately. I rush a lot in front of too many people (as it started out when I presented at Ignite).

Before the presentation, I took some hints from my friend Ben, who had himself presented in the previous Ignite. He advised me to practice with a stopwatch, allow time for laughter, and follow a script. I kept to those guidelines for the most part; I decided to work on a script from an open-ended viewpoint, that is, to have a general list of things to say but figure out the best way to fit it into five minutes by using a script. I went over my script a few times, at least hitting some of the most important parts, but not adhering to it perfectly — my goal was to just know the material well enough to spout it off without hesitation.

The pre-party at the b-side was fun. I had a beer to loosen up a bit, though it didn’t seem to work as well. I got to Chem 140 rather early and paced about, stopping once in a while to practice in an empty classroom. It was hard to be sociable when all I could think about was my presentation.

Chris Reinhard at Ignite Boulder 4

I went on after Nicole Glaros and before Chris Reinhard, a tough spot to be in; Nicole pumped up the crowd with “How to Be a Dance Ninja” and Chris rocked the audience with “How to be a successful musician knowing that you’re never going to make money selling music.” However, I wasn’t as concerned about succeeding with a good presentation as I was concerned about not making it bad — other presentations in the night had encouraged a lot of heckling. It was also helpful that Andrew had turned off the brightkite wall in which many audience members had distracted the audience from the presentation by putting up snarky (and in some cases, absolutely hilarious) comments. It turned out to be a really good idea to remove the wall, and the decision certainly helped out the rest of us — it seemed like people were more focused on the presentations without it. (There’s a good criticism of the brightkite wall by Jon of maperture.net.)

When it came time for me to present, I was still rather nervous. Even my parents were in the room. But it was time to step up, and step up I did — I actually had a great time up there! Although I’m glad it’s over now, I got a kick out of presenting. I felt like I made quite a few mistakes (and was kind of disappointed in forgetting to use the word “sorostitute,” which, as much as I can apologize for it and its foul nature, is really just a good word to describe some of the people I’ve given rides to at work — other college students, particularly from my generation, could probably understand the word quite well). I also felt like the crowd was kind of quiet.

After watching the video of Ignite Boulder 4 on the Ustream channel, I decided that I actually did a lot better than I thought I did (although some of my not-horribly-noticeable mistakes made me cringe), and that the practice I had done was well worthwhile. The crowd wasn’t as quiet as I thought it was. They seemed to be paying attention and not dozing off, and they laughed appropriately (that is, when I figured they would and wanted them to).

As for the other presentations, I definitely don’t think mine was the best. My favorites were Ryan Wanger’s “My Mom Just Joined Facebook, Now What?” and David Mason’s “Ye Olde Prince of Bel-Air,” which was a medieval translation of the lyrics from the theme song to “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” Aimee Giese’s “Why Mommybloggers Suck and What We Can Learn From Them” was informative and funny — since mommybloggers are pretty important in social media, I was excited to hear her presentation. Lilly Justman rounded it out with a more serious presentation; she made some excellent, informative points about energy usage in “Peak Oil: Does This Mean There Won’t Be iPhones?” while Brett Greene went the complete opposite direction and pushed the audience’s limits while demonstrating influence.

Would I do it again? Certainly. Probably not for a while, but I’d be up for it. If you’ve ever wondered how well you could do speaking in front of hundreds of people, Ignite Boulder is your chance to test it. I’m glad I went for it!

I will post video as soon as it is up on the web so you can enjoy the presentation the way it was meant to be enjoyed.

I also couldn’t possibly write about this without thanking Andrew for his great community organization skills, Jeremy Tanner for doing whatever he does so awesomely, Kath for handling the mic and cheering on presenters, and Rande Kamolz for rocking the hell out of venue operation. Rande does this kind of stuff all the time, literally every week (at least once!), and he doesn’t often get the credit he deserves. As always, thanks to Stepan for his great photographs! It was also really neat after the big production to enjoy the company of Brian, Dave, Ryan & his wife Jane, David & his girlfriend and Charles at Hapa and the Southern Sun.

Ignite is a series of presentations in which the slides move every 15 seconds, and the presenter has only so many slides available — it makes for a crazy, fast-paced evening of technology, humor, and all-around fun. This was my second Ignite.

Ben Roberts presenting about the Zombie Apocalypse at Ignite Boulder 3

Ben (whose online moniker is “Ace Harmon,” though I’m not sure Andrew Hyde has picked up on that yet) gave us all the gory details of what humans should do in the event of a zombie apolocalypse. It might’ve taken the audience a little longer than usual to process his brand of humor, but all the better as some of the delayed “duh!” laughs just made the presentation funnier and funnier. “A gentleman does not eat brains and tell!”

It wasn’t long before dearest Ef (whom I’ve nicknamed Puggles) presented “How to Sing Your Way Out of Danger.” I had actually never heard Efrem sing before, though we are the best of friends and have been through plenty of adventures together (especially situations in which he probably should’ve tried singing us out of danger). If it isn’t already self-explanatory, Ef was teaching us how notes and music and lyrics could be combined into a life-saving tool. He brought along his guitar and some nifty tunes, made especially for the Ignite presentation. I must say that I am very happy to have finally heard my Puggles sing, and I hope I get to hear more of it (hopefully outside the context of danger, however).

Ef Rodriguez swoons the crowd with his singing!

The rest of the presentations were indeed wonderful. I’d have to say that Most Original goes to Tim Poindexter’s “The History of the Mustache,” for which he groomed the most amazing mustache. Tara Anderson and Jeremy Tanner, as the stand-up champions of the Boulder tech community, broke the crowd down to tears of laughter with, respectively, “How to Piss Off People and Lose Friends in Boulder” and “What Business Development Can Learn from the Seduction Community” (oh yes, you’d better believe it!). I met some awesome new people like Brian Shaler (“How to use Twitter for Marketing and PR”) and Vikas Reddy (“Award Rules”). On top of that, I was able to see some of the coolest people I’ve met in Boulder present on things that relate closely to their fields or interests: Jo White used some of her media research to present “Breasts and Media’s Obsession With Them,” Brandon Whalen brought down the house with “How to Make a Rap Song,” and Ingrid Alongi — with the help of some of our friends and acquaintances — showed how the Boulder tech crowd can be resourceful in the face of a bad economy. Jen Mayer’s presentation about healthy eating (she is just so cute!) opened some eyes and motivated us to create new eating habits while Grant Blakeman and Reid Phillips (of The Autumn Film) asked us “What Would a Crack Dealer Do?” (just check it out, you’ll get it!). If you want to check out some of the other presentations, you can find them at the Ignite Boulder webpage, which includes links to the presentation videos and will include info about the next Ignite.

I’m hoping to submit a topic again this next time, and although I’ve hinted at it with friends, it’s staying on the down-low for now. Needless to say, I’ve been inspired by this incredible crowd and I would be humbled to get to join the ranks of these guys in the next Ignite. Boulder has truly set the bar for Ignite, and I dare anyone else to beat it!