Doors open at 7pm, Ignites start at 8pm sharp.

***TICKETS ARE SOLD OUT!***
***THERE WILL BE NO TICKETS SOLD AT THE DOOR!***

Check out our Lanyrd listing

Speakers

Tim Maly
Happy birthday, “Cyborg”! 50 years and you’ve hardly aged a day. A whirlwind tour through one of the late 20th century’s most enduring metaphors.

Vinnie Mirchandani
Leveraging AND not OR – The Innovator’s Expanding Palette of Technologies:: Enterprises are learning about “compound innovation” – how to blend 3,5,10 strands of infotech, biotech, cleantech, healthtech etc to create new innovation talent pools, new algorithms, new energy and new medicine

Kat Cizek
The Suburbs: it’s not what I thought

David Crow
Bourbon 101

Gregory Betts
Poets against Authorship draws a thick line in the sand between writers who embrace the old marketplace model and those who completely re-conceptualize how an author relates to their published words. My talk introduces this growing poetic movement and highlights the motivations behind such a radical break from tradition.

Daniel Patricio
Coming Soon!

Crystal Preston-Watson
F**king Magnets, How Do They Work?: How keeping an Insane Clown Posse wonder at the world can drive innovation.
Eons ago this April on the Internet, men in clown makeup asked the world to recognize miracles. The things they proceeded to name weren’t so much miracles, but widely research scientific phenomenons. It might seem their schooling was lacking, but actually they were showing the world a new way to observe itself. My Ignite talk will explain how a complete disregard for reason can lead to the miracle of innovation.”

Brydon Gilliss
Building Software the Obama Way

Shaharris Beh
Buying Lies: Flipping the Recommendation Model
A brief on how our buying decisions are warped and manipulated — and what we can do to change

Satish Kanwar
The Entrepreneur versus The Employee.

Leila Boujnane
Startup Fantasy versus Startup Reality
So you’ve got an idea. And now you are a founder. Of a startup. King of your world. I am your reality check.

Sean Howard
“The most passionate.” That’s my topic.
Fuck personas. Fuck advertising. What is passion? Who does it affect? And how do we leverage it to do good things for the world? Or exploit it for horrible, evil marketing purposes. I think a puppy just died because I used leverage as a verb.

Denis Carr
The Prius Principle: “It’s too big!” “One person won’t make a difference.” “What do I get out of it?” Global Warming is an issue perfectly engineered for people not to care about. How many people share this viewpoint, but on open data? What can we learn from the successes and failures of addressing “Global Warming” as we pursue an open data movement?

Mathijs Gajentaan
Augmented Reality. This new technology will change the way we view the world. It is about enhancing experience using digital imagery that is superimposed on top of out reality.

Heather Leson
Brain Sharing: How crowdsourcing your brain cells can change the world.
What if all the great social media and open source tools could help humanitarian efforts during a crisis? From your couch, you could wiki, maps, tweet, search, blog, create videos and photos, make screencasts, develop software and join a global movement changing aid. Crisis Commons had 250 volunteers in 2009 and grew to over 2000 volunteers after the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. There have been CrisisCamps in over 10 countries. Volunteers are currently supporting efforts with CrisisCamp Pakistan.

Tim Petrou
My presentation will look at the parallel evolution of information technology, environmentalism, and the corresponding governance paradigms from c. 1960 to present.

Geordie Gwalgen Dent
Curious as to what it was like for an independent journalist on the ground during the G20? Learn about the Alternative Media Centre and what kinds of images and information they captured during one of Canada’s most iconic events in 2010.

Meghan Warby
Hakeem Olajuwon, the retired Nigerian American professional basketball player, is the oracle for all wisdom, strength, integrity and growth. At a crossroads in life, love, career or identity? Hakeem has the answer. Look beyond the NCAA/NBA records, rebounding prowess and innumerable hoops-related accolades to discover the Tao of the Gentle Giant.

Joey DeVilla
Go Busk Yourself
You may think of busking – performing on the street – as the sort of thing that unsigned musicians, the mentally unbalanced and the perennially unemployable would take up. I’m here to convince you that busking is the key to real unlimited power. “Shaft” plays on the street, and so should you!

*** About the new ticket prices – we really want to continue to deliver amazing events in a comfortable setting. Proceeds from ticket sales will go towards venue videography, photography, the contests, web fees, etc. Have something to say? Let us know by email: ignitetoronto at gmail.com

PS – the next Ignite is taking place September 2 – if you’re interested in presenting, let us know!

All of the videos can be found here, but here’s a few to pique your interest. As well, stay tuned for an announcement for our next Ignite! Toronto.

Ignite Toronto 3: Kate Hartman – Initial Investigatory Research for Glacier-Human Communication Techniques from Ignite Toronto on Vimeo.

Ignite Toronto 3: Siobhan O’Flynn – Mobile Fragments from Ignite Toronto on Vimeo.

Ignite Toronto 3: Mark Coleran – The Inspiration Loop from Ignite Toronto on Vimeo.

Ignite Toronto 3 is excited to take part in Global Ignite Week! That means six continents, 60 Cities, 600 Talks, 10,000+ Igniters!

Ignite Toronto 3 will take place on March 3, 2010 at 7:00pm at the Drake Hotel, located at 1150 Queen Street West in downtown Toronto.

PLEASE RSVP HERE TO ATTEND

If you’re interested in submitting an Ignite please use this form.

Speaker line up for Ignite Toronto 3 — Global Ignite Week:

Jesse Hirsh, Metaviews
Jesse Hirsh is an internet strategist, researcher, and broadcaster based in Toronto, Canada. He has a weekly nationally syndicated column on CBC radio explaining and analyzing the latest trends and developments in technology using language and examples that are meaningful and relevant to everyday life. For two years, he was the host of an interfaith show on the Rogers and OMNI networks called 3D Dialogue. That show explored all the world’s religions and spiritual paths through interviews with practitioners, gurus, holy people, and cynics regarding their rituals, scriptures, and beliefs (or lack thereof). He owns and operates the consulting firm Openflows Networks Ltd., which specializes in using open source intelligence to develop internet strategies. Primarily, this involves researching and deploying advanced platforms and interactive campaigns for companies and organizations, both large and small.

Mark Coleran, Visual Designer
The Inspiration Loop
For years Mark created fantasy interfaces for movies and a major source of his inspiration was the great work people do in labs and personally, creating incredible software. He then discovered that some of those same people use his work as an inspiration. Who inspires who and why do I think it is a great thing that we can be inspired and copy from each other to build create something new.

Mark Coleran is a visual designer who has worked in a wide range of design disciplines from print graphics to motion design and visual effects. His work in motion graphics has included television show titles and branding through to his specialist area; the design, creation and animation of fantasy user interfaces for film. Over the years this work has seen him create interfaces for such films as The Bourne Ultimatum, Tomb Raider, Mission Impossible 3, The Island and Mr and Mrs Smith. Currently he is working with the Canadian software developer, Gridiron Software. He is creating the user experience and interface for a next generation creative workflow application; Flow.

Jon Lax, Teehan+Lax
Jon has been working in digital media since 1994. He started at Shift Magazine in 1994 where he helped develop the first ad supported site in Canada. In 1995 he received a National Magazine Award Nomination for his writing in the magazine. Jon went on to Grey Interactive in 1996, where he became Sr. Copywriter. He’s worked for many Fortune 500 clients, helping them develop applications, marketing initiatives and strategies in the digital channel. He has won Cannes Lions, CMA RSVP Awards, Marketing Magazine and Advertising & Design Club of Canada Awards for his work. He has sat as a judge for Marketing Magazine, CMA RSVPs, London International Advertising Awards and Applied Arts Awards. In 2002 Jon was named one of “30 to Watch: Marketing’s Next Generation” by Marketing Magazine.

Idris Mootee, Idea Couture
An authority and expert in strategy and brand marketing, Idris operates at the intersection of business strategy, experience design and emerging technologies. Idris provides C-level executive and board-level counsel, innovation and strategic guidance for multiple industries that often involve leading growth initiatives and innovation management. Previously he was Senior VP, Chief Strategist with Blast Radius (a WPP company), where he was responsible for global strategy outputs for clients such as Nike, Nintendo, Intrawest, BMW and AOL. Prior to that he was global head of strategy with Organic (an OMG company) with clients such as HP, Bell and Daimler Chrysler. His other experiences included President, Chief Strategy Officer with Live Lowe and Partners (an IPG company) with clients such as HSBC and MasterCard, consultant with McKinsey and Chief Strategist N.A. with CBIZ e-solutions (CBIZ).

Mark McKay, Editor & Producer
Koala Bears, Uzis & Cocaine: The Future of Monetizing Video & the Art of Slight of Hand
After rising to fame through DJ battles with Buck 65 in Halifax, Mark McKay went on to DJ for the one-hit-wonder “LEN.” Inspired by an appearance on the “Mike Bullard Show,” McKay shifted his focus to pursue a career in late night television. Using the internet as his medium, McKay began producing a videoblog which has been featured on MTV and blogTO. Mark is the winner of the 2007 Mesh Conference Video Award, and winner of Fair Copyright for Canada’s “C-61 in 61 Seconds.” He was also the runner-up in the first edition of the televised series “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister.” Today, Mark McKay works for the CTV Digital Media Group as an editor and producer creating original video content for the web.

Chaitanya Kalevar, Independent Global Activist
I would like to share my global perspective for our planet, as a planetary patriot!
There are other numbers besides 350 that people should know – locally and globally!

Chaitanya is an independent global activist who worked as an engineer for Atomic Energy and was the first Ontario resident who opposed the building of the Pickering Nuclear reactor in early 70s. He was in Copenhagen-09 and before that in WSF[07] – Nairobi, WSSD[02] -Joberg, Hague-99 Appeal for Peace, Istanbul[96] – Habitat-II, Rio[92] – Earth Summit and many others in Canada and US. He has taught at Waterloo, McMaster, Ryerson and York.

Jake Jakob Koseleci, Writer & Filmmaker
Jake’s building used to be one of the first Loblaws stores. He converted it into a house with a public art space in the front and installed the largest residential green roof in Toronto. His talk is about repurposing under-utilized commercial buildings and the installation of the green roof using experimental materials.

Jake made and lost millions on paper during the dotcom bubble. He’s in his thirties, semi-retired and trying not to waste his life. His is the curator of the works of a little known artist named Sternime who left him all of his works before he disappeared mysteriously a few years ago.

Michael Dila, Torch Partnership
Michael co-founded Torch Partnership with Robin Uchida in 2006. Together, they shape strategic conversations and help their clients create organizational confidence so that they can confront their “wicked problems”. Michael is one of the founders of Overlap (theoverlap.org), an annual, peer-to-peer gathering for those working at the center of emerging theory, methods and practices of innovation. He is Chief Strategist of Strategic Innovation Lab (slab.ocad.ca) at the Ontario College or Art & Design and also the chief catalyst of the Unfinished Business initiative (unfinished.torchiswicked.com).

Sacha Chua, Tech Evangelist & Storyteller
The Shy Presenter: An Introvert’s Guide to Speaking in Public
If you’ve ever struggled with small talk, felt overwhelmed in crowds, or wondered how to speak up at work, this talk’s for you. In five minutes, you’ll pick up quick tips about discovering what you have to say, how to say it, and why it’s worth braving the spotlight.

Sacha Chua spent grade school to grad school hiding in computer labs and libraries. She prefers bookstores over bars, close friends instead of crowds, and silence over small talk. Blogging and public speaking turned out to be excellent ways to learn, though. Today, tens of thousands of people have viewed Sacha Chua’s presentations, attended her keynotes, and read her blog (LivingAnAwesomeLife.com).

Riwa Harfoush, Strategist & Project Chameleon
Rethinking the Copycat: How Mimicry Can Inspire Innovation
I know two things: 1) People hoard their good ideas to the detriment of progress and 2) ‘copycat’ has been unfairly pegged with some seriously negative connotation. But what if the ideas we imitate inspire social change? What if opening them up to replication makes them cooler, smarter and more effective? I’m testing my own, working theory on this as we try to morph a good idea (the environmental health clinic) into one that can be copied and implemented by anyone – and I’m really excited to share what I’ve learned.

Ryan Short, Interactive Producer
At the age of 16, Ryan had low self-esteem, was 245 pounds and did not have the motivation to work hard in school and to find himself out of the rut he was in. At the time, he enjoyed biking, however, never considered it something I would be any further interested in. This was until Bryan Harris introduced him to the YMCA-YWCA Sprint Triathlon. By entering this race he had a goal to complete a triathlon and to combine all of the sports he had an interest in. During his 4 months of training leading up to the race, he lost over 60 pounds and gained a level of motivation that builds with each day. Throughout his personal and professional career he started a company and successfully completed 2 Half-Ironman Triathlons, 1 marathon. He raced on an amateur level across Canada and and is currently training for his first Ironman Triathlon in Lake Placid, New York. This Ryan’s story.

Moira Fogarty, New Media Planner
Graffiti and Wikis
Moira wants to draw a comparison between graf as street art “defacing” buildings becoming big in the mainstream art world and wikis as “defacing” websites going from grassroots nerd culture to becoming big in the mainstream corporate world.

Moira has lived in Toronto, Ontario since 1997. She attended the University of Toronto and completed her Hons. B.A. and M.A. in English Literature. She also took motorcycle and glassworking lessons at Sheridan College in Oakville, and web design at Ryerson. She’s worked for the Province of Ontario for about 7 years, and his currently involved with new media planning for Cabinet Office. She used to work for the Silver Snail Comic Store from 2003-2004, and loved it.

Lee Dale, Culture, Inspiration & Community at Say Yeah!
It’s about Time! How finding daily patterns in where we spend our time can help us win back our lives.
With a history of building Brand Communities as Founder and President of Smack Inc, and as VP of Communications for Sweeney Dale Interior Design Inc, Lee brings just the right balance of passion and insight to Say Yeah! Participating in a variety of events and organizations, Lee is an active leader and contributor to Toronto’s community of entrepreneurs and design stewards. Often seen immersed in some sort of reading material, Leeʼs insight and acumen are derived from such diverse interests as culture, sociology, marketing, business, the environment, history, photography, music, and politics.
Say Yeah is found at: http://yousayyeah.com
Lee is found at: http://leedale.ca

Rob Cruickshank
Why is a Light Saber like an Air-raid Siren?
From hot-rodding to circuit-bending, hardware hacking has always been sexy. But what happens when hackable resources become scarce? Can you have my Speak & Spell only when you pry it from my cold, dead hands?
Robert Cruickshank is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist. His work in various media including electronic, kinetic, and robotic installations, sound art, electroacoustic music, and photography have been exhibited in Toronto, and internationally.
Much of his work is associated with InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre in Toronto, where he has developed a number of hands-on workshops for artists using electronics, and is currently a member of the Board of Directors. When caught playing with battery-powered toy animals, or looking at cats and hot rods on the internet, he will defend this as research.

Mark Kuznicki
Digerati Throwdown
Torontonians in 2010 have an opportunity to restore our sense of community and use new tools of communication to set the agenda for our politicians. My vision is a program of coordinated and community-generated events all across the City to re-engage our civic imaginations. ChangeCamp is launching a city-wide initiative to help us imagine a new age of public engagement and civic innovation across a vast and complex city. I want to challenge the Twitterati and digirati of Toronto to get out of the bubble and use their skills to help Torontonians in all of Toronto’s wards to tell their stories, identify their issues and propose solutions.

Mark Kuznicki works at the intersection of technology, open government and social innovation. Mark’s work combines social media, face-to-face gatherings and open source approaches to engage citizens, connect communities and foster creative and innovative ideas for the future. Mark helped organize Toronto TransitCamp, a “solutions playground” that looked at the future of Toronto’s transit system, and wrote about the model for Harvard Business Review. Mark launched ChangeCamp in 2009, an event and a community to “re-imagine government and citizenship in the age of participation” that has spread from Toronto to Ottawa, Vancouver, Edmonton and Halifax.

Mark Greenspan
Riding the Rocket – Journeying through issues of race and representation in the public realm

After backpacking through Borneo, studying Tibetan Buddhism in Dharmsala, and getting gang beat in Singapore, Mark came to the following conclusions; kids and old people are by far the coolest to hang out with, diversity rocks, and a lot of people think their way is the best way. When travelling, Mark relies on his sense of humour, portable espresso maker and the kindness of strangers to get by. Currently, Mark Greenspan helps to facilitate business within the digital media community by producing a series of conferences called nextMEDIA. He has also completed a Masters of Education in Sociology and Equity Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies which will serves as the inspiration for this presentation. You can find him online at markgreenspan dot com or on twitter @ markgreenspan

Siobhan O’Flynn – Mobile Fragments
I advise on the design of digital narratives: transmedia, crossmedia, physical installations, interactive films & recently an interactive graphic novel. In 2006/07 I was the narrative design consultant on Late Fragment, a feature film/dvd that premiered at Cannes. I have advised on over interactive 65 digital works, many of which have gone on to win awards in Canada & abroad.

Having joined the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab in 2001, I continue to critically engage with the development of emergent forms in digital media and I have mentored in the Digital Development Lab multiple times and in the Melting Silos Program (NFB/SFU Praxis/Agentic) for the Development of Transmedia Content, both in Vancouver. I am currently programming Storytelling X.O, a full day event at FITC Toronto 2010 on digital storytelling today.

Steve Mugiri, AfriGadget
I am a writer for AfriGadget which is a website about appropriate and ingenious application of tech. in Africa
AfriGagdet is a team blog about the appropriate and ingenious application of tech by people. I want to spend some time introducing Toronto to this subject so as to show them another side of Africa that is not just about war, hunger and suffering. AfriGadget is about people doing interesting and ingenious things with technology to solve the problems that face them in every day life.

Watch all the videos from Ignite Toronto 2 on Vimeo

Corey Reid – How Product Development is like Kung Fu

Matthew Milan – The New Strategy

Michael Anton Dila – Women, Fire & Dangerous Things

Matt Ratto – Why Johnny Can’t Read an iPhone: Using critical making to teach socio-technical literacy

Ignite Toronto 2: Erin Bury – Why you should be working at a start-up

Ignite Toronto 2: Sam Ladner – Designing Technology for Social Selves

Ignite Toronto 2: Leigh Honeywell – Fresh Immersion

Schedule:
7pm – Welcome & contest start
8pm – Contest judging, by our expert panel
8:15pm – Ignites
10pm – Wrap

Speakers:

Leigh Honeywell @hypatiadotca – Fresh Immersion

Leigh Honeywell usually breaks things, and sometimes makes things. She’s spent a year working with folks to build a real-world community, and has been getting her feet wet in a couple of free software communities as well. This Ignite is about the things she’s learned.

By day, she works at a large security vendor in their Software-as-a-Service group, as a Malware Operations Engineer. By night (and sometimes on her lunchbreaks) she’s a fourth-ish year part time student at the University of Toronto, working on a BSc in Computer Science and Equity Studies, with the latter being about equity as in equality, not as in finance. She also co-founded and helps run a non-profit hacker space in Kensington Market called HackLab.To. It’s pretty awesome, you should check it out. They even have a neon sign.

Michael Anton Dila @michaeldila – Women, Fire & Dangerous Things

Michael co-founded Torch Partnership with Robin Uchida in 2006. Together, they shape strategic conversations and help their clients create organizational confidence so that they can confront their “wicked problems”.

Michael is one of the founders of Overlap, an annual, peer-to-peer gathering for those working at the center of emerging theory, methods and practices of innovation. He is Chief Strategist of Strategic Innovation Lab at the Ontario College or Art & Design and also the chief catalyst of the Unfinished Business initiative.

Matthew Milan @mmilan – The New Strategy
Somewhere in the last 20 years, we started to suck at strategy. Everyone added ’strategist’ to their job title, and started giving advice to peers, teams and companies on what they should do next. The thing is, it’s no longer about what you do next, it’s about what you do now. The New Strategy will challenge your definition of what strategy is, and suggest that strategy we thought we knew, never really existed.

Matthew is a designer and entrepreneur who likes to get his hands dirty in as many places as possible. Currently this means a mix of experience design, service design and strategy, but in the past he’s designed everything from spatial technology to ski hills. He is currently a Partner at Normative, a Toronto-based design and strategy studio that helps companies make their products, services and experiences relevant and valuable in an increasingly complex world.

Ryan Coleman @ryancoleman – Designing for visual efficiency

Just reading this description unleashes a complex process to help your mind understand what your eyes are looking at. Together, our brain and eyes run through these processes millions upon millions of times daily, all without us even being aware of it. “Designing for Visual Efficiency” looks at the process of how we see and how that knowledge allows you to create designs that are visually efficient.

Ryan Coleman is an entrepreneur, facilitator and information designer from Toronto, ON. Through interactive workshops, facilitated sessions and/or consulting projects Ryan works with clients to organize and refine their ideas and shape them into a common vision that they can act on and share clearly, concisely & consistently. Ryan is also a founding member and Chief Community Evangelist for VizThink, a global community of visual thinkers & practitioners.

Matt Ratto @mattratto – Why Johnny Can’t Read an iPhone: Using critical making to teach socio-technical literacy

In the 1950’s educators and parents connected poor literacy rates to how reading was taught in schools. ‘Why Johnny Can’t Read’ was one result – a book that advocated not just new strategies for education, but new ways of organizing educational institutions. Currently, we have a different reading problem – most people have a limited ability to ‘read’ technologies, to evaluate the social, cultural, and environmental ramifications of their adoption and use. This literacy problem is similar to the one that came before and requires not just individual discovery but institutional innovation. Critical Making is a practice that highlights these issues and poses some solutions.

Matt Ratto is an Assistant Professor and director of the Critical Making lab in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on how hands-on productive work – making – can supplement and extend critical reflection on the relations between digital technologies and society. Since 2007, Ratto has carried out workshops in ‘critical making’ in Amsterdam, London, Canada, the US, and Scotland.

Sam Ladner @sladner – Designing Technology for Social Selves

Many of us are familiar with the Freudian elements of self: id, ego and superego. Freud’s conception is biological, however, not social. George Herbert Mead offers us a social notion of self made up of the “I,” the “me” and the “generalized other.” I’ll show how Mead’s concept of self helps us understand technology design in today’s socially-driven software and web environment.

Sam Ladner is a sociologist with an interest in technology, work and organizations. She has mixed private-sector consulting work with academic research and teaching. Using a range of methods including interviewing, observation and ethnography, she consults on digital product design, organizational change, and the social aspects of technological innovation. She holds a PhD in sociology from York University. She currently works for her own firm as consultant and principal with Copernicus Consulting Group.

Matt Nish-Lapidus @emenel – Design for Ritual

Throughout history, ritual has played an important part in society. It is sought out by individuals in many different ways, from the profound to the mundane. How do designers working on new products and services tap into the desire for ritual to improve engagement and enjoyment? Matt is, in no particular order, a designer, music nerd, cyclist, and critic. Along with a dedicated team, Matt is a local leader for the Interaction Design Association. He currently works as a designer and consultant at nForm User Experience based out of Toronto and Edmonton.

Erin Bury @erin_bury

After cutting her teeth managing public relations for fortune 500 tech companies, Erin joined Sprouter to better utilize her passion for networking, community-building & Web 2.0 technologies. As Community Manager, Erin is the voice of the Sprouter community of entrepreneurs – the connector between Sprouter and the world at large; providing ongoing communication in both directions.
A journalism grad who loves all things social media, Erin was one of the co-organizers of Twestival Toronto.

Rohan Jayasekera – @RohanSJ – Socionomics

What if much of what you read in the newspaper has the causes and effects backward? This Ignite is about Socionomics, a relatively new field that looks into how mass social mood governs what we wear (fashion), what we watch (movies), how we invest (the stock market), who we vote for (democracy), and the entire economy.

Rohan’s been developing online products and services for a few decades, including co-founding Sympatico, the world’s first mass-market Internet service.  He has many interests, including training as a psychotherapist.  He likes cats.  He dislikes elitism, dishonesty, and groupthink.

Jay Goldman @jaygoldman

Community is a hot buzzword bingo property these days, but what does it actually mean? Jay will draw on lots of real world examples to explore how communities form and what we can learn from them as designers and builders.

Jay is helping to lead the feedback revolution as the Head of Marketing for Rypple. He’s spent more than 10 years in the tech trenches as a designer and user experience professional, has written for the Harvard Business Review, authored the O’Reilly Facebook Cookbook, and has been one of the stewards of the TorCamp community since its inception in 2005. Jay hosts the weekly Mr. Mobile video podcast for Butterscotch.com, tweets as @jaygoldman, and occasionally blogs at jaygoldman.com.

Corey Reid @barsoomcore -  How Product Development is like Kung Fu, with many informative illustrations from the works of Jackie Chan and others.
Kung-fu movies and software development: what does the one have to tell us about the other? Hopefully, more than you might think at first glance.

Years ago, an itinerant Tokyo film critic left his entire collection of Hong Kong cinema (in a collection of brown paper bags) to young Corey Reid. This sparked an obsession with graceful leaps, bone-crushing falls and strange poses that remains undimmed to this day. Shortly after this obsession kicked off, Corey found himself in the software industry and found it equally fascinating. He has led project teams for software companies across Canada and currently runs the development team at FreshBooks here in Toronto. He wears cowboy boots, teaches Japanese swordsmanship and thinks Twitter is pretty neat.

Justin Kozuch @jkozuch - Lessons Learned in Community  Building

A presentation about the basics of community, some examples of successful communities, and some tips on how to build them.

Justin Kozuch is the founder of Refresh Events, and works behind the scenes bringing together the most engaging and influential minds in Toronto’s vibrant technology scene. During the day, he can be found reading social media marketing blogs, promoting Refresh Events to the community, and networking with industry superstars. In a previous lifetime, he worked as an Interactive Developer, and worked with large brands such as RIM, the Wall Street Journal and Virgin Charter. His claim to fame was once helping find Mayor David Miller a napkin.

Download the file.

Subscribe to this podcast series via iTunes. Or, visit the O’Reilly Media area at iTunes to find other podcasts from O’Reilly.

The future of gadgets isn’t necessarily the homogeneous iPhone. With open source hardware and personal manufacturing, we can all have custom gadgets someday. At Ignite Toronto Mark Argo talks about what we can learn from history as we try to make a DIY future. He describes the talk as:

Since the dawn of humanity we have fashioned objects to help extend our basic capabilities: see better, walk farther, speak louder, soar higher. More than ever we depend on these ‘gadgets’ to navigate our environment and culture. ‘Adapting With Technology’ explores the origins of modern gadgetry and looks towards their future role as personal technologies.

And here’s some more about Mark:

Mark is an artist and technologist who has worked extensively in creative applications of software, hardware and networks. His work has been exhibited internationally across Asia, Europe and North America, and has been featured in major technology magazines such as Wired and Linux Journal. Mark was a resident artist at the Fabrica Communication Research Center in Treviso, Italy for 2005-2006, recipient of the MobileAsia competition’s grand prize in 2006, and is supported by the Canadian Arts Council to develop a series of new works for 2009-2010. Currently he is an instructor at Ryerson’s New Media program and founder of Aesthetec Studio (aesthetec.net)

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

Watch all the videos on Vimeo.

Lisa Torjman – Social Innovation

Brady Gilchrist – The Death of TV

Robin Uchida – Neighbourhood Diaries

Ryan Taylor – Branding Ethics, Greener than Green

Sandy Kemsley – The Hungry Geek

We’re super stoked that Rogers is the title sponsor of the inaugural Ignite Toronto. They’ve graciously offered to provide the prize for our Summer Cupcake Contest!

Important Details:
Date: Tuesday August 25, 2009
Venue: Drake Hotel, 1150 Queen St W, Toronto
Time: 7-10pm

Schedule:

7pm – Welcome & Contest Start
Ignite! Toronto’s inaugural contest will be for Best Summer Cupcake! We supply the cupcakes and the decorations, you supply the creativity! One entry per person, judging criteria includes awesomeness, tastiness and a special category of “Most Unusual Use of Frosting”

8pm – Contest Judging
By our expert panel, of course.

8:15pm – Ignites!

Greg J Smith – Urban Screens
Game interfaces, augmented reality and the geospatial web – oh, my! How is our perception of the city changing in light of these paradigms? More importantly, how can citizens critically engage these tools rather than be spoon fed their (mediated) perception of the city?

Greg J. Smith is a Toronto-based designer with an active interest in the intersection of space and media. He is co-editor of the digital arts publication Vague Terrain and blogs at Serial Consign.

Colin Henderson – Your Bank, What Happened?
The failure of banks, and the evolution of P2P Financial Services
Colin is CommunityLend’s Chief Technology Officer and a long time banking professional. Colin took his first position in banking in his homeland of Scotland and has worked in England, Canada and the US. His extensive experience in the banking industry included positions in branches and headquarters, retail and commercial. Colin is a strong believer in harnessing the power of Internet, and in particular open source, to take us beyond simple automation of existing transactions and towards better capabilities to meet people’s needs.

Lisa Torjman

Mat Lincez – Street Media is Social Media
This presentation briefly explores my interest in street media as kin to social media. The semantic similarities and how mobility and the web -is and will- enable for a further mixing, blending, and enrichment of dialogues (exchanges) occurring between multiple “street level” personas.

Mathew is a recovering graffiti writer; designer, educator, and artist turned principal and wannabe futurist.

Mark Argo – Adapting With Technology
Since the dawn of humanity we have fashioned objects to help extend our basic capabilities: see better, walk farther, speak louder, soar higher. More than ever we depend on these ‘gadgets’ to navigate our environment and culture. ‘Adapting With Technology’ explores the origins of modern gadgetry and looks towards their future role as personal technologies.

Mark is an artist and technologist who has worked extensively in creative applications of software, hardware and networks. His work has been exhibited internationally across Asia, Europe and North America, and has been featured in major technology magazines such as Wired and Linux Journal. Mark was a resident artist at the Fabrica Communication Research Center in Treviso, Italy for 2005-2006, recipient of the MobileAsia competition’s grand prize in 2006, and is supported by the Canadian Arts Council to develop a series of new works for 2009-2010. Currently he is an instructor at Ryerson’s New Media program and founder of Aesthetec Studio (http://www.aesthetec.net).

Karin Abramova – Conceptual Art
This arguably one of the most debated art movements has been the target of a lot of Boo’s, WTF’s and “I could make that!” from its audiences. This is the art where a concept, an idea in a work of art take precedence over the creation of a traditional art object.
A social media strategist at Cyberplex and a Russian, Karin Abramova likes to ask questions, notice details, document her life and take baby steps in jet setting. Biting a chunk out of [pop] culture, and obsessed with finer things in life, she wants to keep dancing till she’s 80.

Brady Gilchrist – The Death of TV

Robin Uchida – Neighbourhood Diaries
Where do stories come from? What is a ‘neighbourhood’? What can we do to encourage both? Children will express their views on these questions in a series of neighbourhood workshops, assisted by writers and artists. “Neighbourhood Diaries. Stories from where I live.” is a Fresh Ground Project on exhibit at Harbourfront Gallery in the spring of 2010.
Robin Uchida is a partner at Torch Partnership. Torch is in the business of undoing ‘business as usual’. An artist by training, a designer in practice, an entrepreneur by accident, a strategist by design and a teacher by desire, Robin continues to work on adaptive solutions with individuals, groups and institutions. What’s more important, the problem you see or the problem you don’t see?

Sandy Kemsley
Sandy is an independent analyst and systems architect, specializing in business process management, Enterprise 2.0, enterprise architecture and business intelligence. In addition to her technical background, I’ve worked on the business operations end of projects, and Sandy’s often involved from business requirements and analysis through technology design and deployment.

Justin Kozuch – Community 101
A presentation about the basics of community, some examples of successful communities, and some tips on how to build them.
Justin Kozuch is the founder of Refresh Events, and works behind the scenes bringing together the most engaging and influential minds in Toronto’s vibrant technology scene. During the day, he can be found reading social media marketing blogs, promoting Refresh Events to the community, and networking with industry superstars. In a previous lifetime, he worked as an Interactive Developer, and worked with large brands such as RIM, the Wall Street Journal and Virgin Charter.

Richard Thomas – Poetic Alchemy
Richard is obsessed with new word formation, larval lexicons, protophrases and statistically improbable syllebrity. What role does poetic alchemy and spontaneous craftsmanship of language play in innovation and the socialization of new concepts? This talk briefly discusses new literary monsters and pearls as weak signals of shifts in thinking, and understanding ones power of definition in transforming dream to meme to theme.

Richard is a futurvore, word goblin and a bad design fiction author. Currently he is Principle at Idea Futures, a Design Research and Strategic Foresight arm of Idea Couture, and is responsible for hundreds of horrible words.

Maggie Fox – When Followers Lead: Flock Behaviour in Communities
Leaders lead and followers follow, right? Not always. Researchers into bird behaviour have identified that a few well-placed, co-ordinated “followers” can shift the direction of a flock of hundreds. What are the implications of that for businesses and online communities undergoing change. Can the followers lead?

Maggie Fox is the founder of Social Media Group, one of the world’s largest independent agencies helping business navigate the new socially engaged Web. Maggie is frequently asked to speak to the media and business groups across North America about Web 2.0, and sits on the Advisory Board for SMToday Media, which operates the Social Media Collective and MyVenturePad sites.

Ryan Taylor – Branding Ethics, Greener than Green.
With certifications like B Corporation surfacing along side L3C legislation are we moving towards recognition of a ‘lowest common denominator’ when measuring ethics in the enterprise? And by creating branded standards are we allowing for the marketing of ethics in the same fashion as the ‘green’ movement.

Ryan Taylor is founder of the Fair Trade Jewellery Company in Toronto, a social start-up focused on luxury product design, ethical mining practices, sustainable community development and transparent, ethical enterprise.

Nick Stedman – After Deep Blue: Modular Robot System
After Deep Blue, is a modular robot system that ambiguously moves between endearing and sinister. For the past decade, Nick has been designing and building devices which enhance social and cultural activities. These range from machines to interactive installations to performance technology to websites and software. He works primarily with electronic and mechanical technology, programming computers, and fabricating physical forms. In recent years, he has increasingly focused on making robots which physically interact with people. His goal is to build machines which feel as if they are alive. Once built, the devices are enacted in galleries, festivals or other public forums where people have the chance to explore them at their will.

Nick’s projects have been shown in ISEA2004, Future Physical, Artbots, and Ars Electronica. He teaches at Ryerson and will start teaching at York this fall. Previously, he managed the studio at InterAccess, and worked at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

10:00pm – Wrap and socialize!

Contest: Best Summer Cupcake!
We’ve decided that the first Ignite! contest in Toronto will be ever-popular cupcake decorating. We’ll supply cupcakes for everyone, as well as decorating materials and icing, etc. You supply the creativity and cupcakey ingenuity. We’ll be judging right before the Ignites begin, to get y’all wound up on sugar for the presentations themselves. And huge thanks to Rogers for providing exclusive sponsorship and the contest’s snazzy prize!

There is no cover charge or any sort of fee. If are attending please RSVP here.

We will be posting the talks as soon as we have a list of all speakers. If you would like to speak, please go here and enter a talk. We hope to see you at the The Drake Hotel, Tuesday evening August 25.

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