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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