It is time for my belated post about Ignite Portland 2. I did not go to the first. In fact, I had no idea there even was a previous one here. A little unsure what to expect, I figured it would be a big geekfest full of nerdy guys. In reality, it was just about 50/50 guys to girls. The vast majority of the girls were not even doing the “I’m here with my significant other” thing–they were with their girlfriends, guyfriends, and had an active interest in the talks. It seems that Portland has a bigger geek-girl contingent than I thought.
I am quite happy that I was able to attend. At first, I was a bit worried that I would arrive just in time for the first speaker to start. Anything before about 7:30pm during the week is tough for me because I tend to work a later day at work. I cut out a bit early and was pleasantly surprised that the I-5 was wide open when it should have been stop-and-go. I managed to get there early enough to not only get a seat, but to get some beer, and before they had to close the doors. I guess they were expecting 5–600 people, but they had to send people away when they reached capacity at, I think, 750 people or so.
Anyway, the talks were great. Ignite in other cities, from what I understand, is very tech-centric. Portland’s was a good mix of topics, from black pepper to biodiesel to sushi to stick figures to photography to Germany loving Hasselhoff.
I would highly encourage you to watch the videos, if you were not able to make it. I would also highly encourage you to go to the next one.
The YouTube videos are linked to from this blog post: http://www.igniteportland.com/2008/02/here-come-the-videos/
For those, like myself, who prefer to have video sent to the TV or iPod, I made an iTunes-friendly feed here: http://netninja.com/files/igniteportland2/index.xml
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