Google Hangout URL for tonight's ignitespeak open source orientation

I don't think the last post made this clear, but here's the link to tonight's Google hangout session, where I will be conducting an orientation of the app and how it works and what we need.

Here's an embed of the event!

Stepping down from Ignite Baltimore leadership

I have a post up on Technical.ly Baltimore, Why I'm stepping down from Ignite Baltimore:

For the past several years, Neal Shaffer, Jen Meyer and I have had the privilege of helping to organize Ignite Baltimore, where 16 (or so) speakers each get five minutes to present an idea with slides that advance automatically every 15 seconds. 

It has been an extremely rewarding experience. Through Ignite we’ve met some of the most thoughtful, passionate and creative people around town. We even got to fly in one of the founders of Ignite, Brady Forrest (whose talk appears in the list below). Though I have been most publicly associated with Ignite, in reality it has been a group effort from the start: Patti Chan and I originally started working on Ignite back in 2008. Eventually the team grew to include awesome friends like Neal and Jen, and also Heather Sarkissian, Christian Malone, Lindsey Davis and Melissa Macchiavelli. 

But now it’s time for new leadership and new ideas. Jen, Neal and I are stepping down from the Ignite Baltimore team.

Check out the full post for more details, including a list of some of my favorite Ignite videos!

Ignite Baltimore Proposals and Grants

We're now accepting proposals to speak at Ignite Baltimore #12 on 3/28, and one of my co-organizers, Neal Shaffer, wrote a comprehensive explanation of the kinds of talks we're looking for. Please consider submitting your idea for consideration! Proposals are due 2/17/13.

We also use the ticket proceeds to give out Ignition Grants at every Ignite, aimed at funding a new projects in the city. This time we're giving out $4500 in grants. Grant applications are due 2/22/13. If you've got a worthy idea that needs funding, please apply!

Giving Away $4500 In Ignition Grants at Ignite Baltimore #11

Just a quick note to alert everyone to the fact that we're giving away $4500 in Ignition Grants at the next Ignite Baltimore. Kate Bladow, Scott Burkholder, and Andrea Snyder have taken over leadership of this project, along with our new fiscal sponsor gb.tc.

If you know someone that's got an idea for a new product, service, or project that would make Baltimore a better place to live and work, please encourage them to apply. More details here.

Also, I recently appeared on gb.tc's weekly podcast discussing the call for proposals to speak at Ignite. In case you're wondering what kinds of talks we're looking for, or if you just want to know what's up with Baltimore tech in general, check out the video of the show:

Open source experiment: Ignite Baltimore home page

It's time to update and refresh the Ignite Baltimore website. As Ignite is a not-for-profit labor of love, we've tried a few different approaches over the years to having a website that looks nice and can be easily maintained (e.g. we need quality work but don't have the funds to pay for it, so we try to barter).

I've concluded that the best way to do this, something I would recommend to anyone else running a project like this, is to make a super simple site with a few pages, with a design I can execute myself, and then link to external sites when we need specialty content. In Ignite's case, we'll be using EventBrite, Flickr, and YouTube to host all of our dynamic material. This means the site itself can focus on being a resource for things that don't change as much, like "About" and "Contact Us" and "Speaker Guidelines".

The current prototype is here: http://ignitebaltimore.github.com

I'm developing the new site out in the open on GitHub. This means anyone can contribute to the new site. If you have an improvement, please fork the project, make your changes, then send me a pull request. The repository is here: https://github.com/ignitebaltimore/ignitebaltimore.github.com.

A note on self-reliance: I know this site doesn't look as beautiful as it could, or as it should (given the high-touch feel of the event), but I also have decided that I'm not going to let my lack of design talent stop me from building nice things. On pretty much every software project I've worked on, I've felt hamstrung by a lack of design help. I mentioned this to Gabe Weinberg who advised me to treat design like just another facet of programming to hack around, over, and through. I've decided to take him on that and focus on making things that look "good enough", and that's what I've done here.

Why I Work in Baltimore

Here's the video from my recent Ignite for a Better Baltimore talk, "Baltimore: A Great Place to Pickup Ideas and Run With Them".


The slides are posted here.

My Presentation Materials

In case you saw me speak at TEDxBaltimore, RailsConf, or Ignite RailsConf over the past few days and would like to get access to my materials, here they are!

• TEDxBaltimore links and TEDxBaltimore slides
• RailsConf HTML5 tutorial materials
• Ignite RailsConf 20 Favorite Gems slides (with code samples!)

Thanks for checking out my blog!

Help Us With Ignite Baltimore

Recently friends have been offering to help us with Ignite Baltimore. It's a true labor of love that's completely powered by volunteers, donations, sponsors, and goodwill and I'm super psyched that people want to help.

However, it's hard for me to know how serious people are.  Heather, Neal, and I have various responsibilities divided up between us but there are plenty of things that we don't have time to do or can't do as well as a dedicated person might.  So, as an experiment, I'm putting this list out into the ether to see who might step forward to take up one or more of these projects!

• Organizing an after party: It would be nice to have a really well-planned event immediately after each Ignite that we could funnel the audience towards. Ideally it would feature live music by a Baltimore performer. This event would probably need separate sponsorship.
• Creating content for our website: I'd like us to post things like follow-up articles with Ignition Grant winners and past speakers, interviews with upcoming speakers, etc.
• T-shirt printing and sales: we have a few custom-printed shirts that the organizers wear, and people often ask where they can buy the shirts.  We could really use someone to step up and take charge of this, including selling the shirts at events.  Ideally they could be sold online as well. All proceeds would benefit the Ignition Grants. 
• Manage Facebook presence: I'm in charge of this right now and just don't have the enthusiasm for Facebook that I do for Twitter. I'd love to see someone become the guru of our Facebook page and turbocharge it.
• Manage LinkedIn presence: Ditto.
• Manage media partnerships: We have great relationships with The Urbanite and MD Daily Record. I'd love someone to take this over and start recruiting a few new partnerships (like a radio station).
• Print marketing: We don't do anything with postcards or flyers right now. I feel like we could diversify and renew the audience further by trying this for the next Ignite.
• BmoreSmart: We're part of this group of social entrepreneurs. They have all kinds of interesting projects and opportunities.  Helping them would be a great way of helping us!

If any of those catch your eye please email me at mike@subelsky.com.

Thanks!!

What's an Ignite event like?

One of my favorite parts of Ignite Baltimore is getting to work with talented local companies and showcasing their great work. If you're wondering what Ignite events are like, a video production company in town called HYPE Online made a really great short hype video explaining what it's about, embedded below.

Thanks HYPE!

Undoing Your Social Training and Creative Inhibitions in Five Minutes

Last night, I was honored to be the first speaker at the first Ignite DC. My talk was called "Undoing Your Social Training and Creative Inhibitions in Five Minutes".  The gist of my talk is:

"Our culture inculcates several behaviors that harm creative, entrepreneurial people: we're taught to avoid conflict and real, open honesty with one another, and we're taught to fear failure. This may work for creating a polite, civil society, but it doesn't serve the individual who is trying to make a difference. But there's hope! Improv theater actors have devised many techniques for overcoming these tendencies which enables them to create inventive stories extemporaneously. Mike will share ways to combat creative inhibitions gleaned from six years of teaching and performing improv theater."

The slides are below.

Undoing Your Social Training and Creative Inhibitions in Five Minutes

Ignite Baltimore and SocialDevCampEast

Two really cool events are going down in the next couple of weeks here in Baltimore that everyone should check out.

Ignite Baltimore is an event I'm helping to organize where 16 people each get five minutes on stage to talk about something they are passionate about.  We've got hackers, bloggers, painters, reverends, entrepreneurs, green builders, and so on all coming together to share what they know. The event debuts Thursday, October 16th at 6 pm at The Windup Space (12 W. North Ave).

The second SocialDevCampEast conference, taking place on November 1st, is a great gathering of the smartest tech innovators on the East coast.  As Dave Troy writes:

SocialDevCamp is a real user-powered unconference with no commercial agenda -- the entire purpose is to CONNECT the leaders who will shape the next wave of tech innovation on the east coast.  Come see how dynamic a truly user-powered conference can be!

I'm really interested in these events because they are a great way to connect with others interested in technology and digital culture, and learn new things while I'm doing it.  See you there!

Ignite Baltimore Call for Participants

Hey everyone, we're organizing Ignite Baltimore, and we're looking for interesting topics.  Check out the site for more details, or visit these other city Ignite pages for inspiration:

• Phoenix
• New York
• Seattle
  

If you're a Twitter person, follow @ignitebaltimore.