Ignite 2 Program

Bilal Ghalib @: Hacker Spaces and PBLE’s – American Re-education and the Importance of Making Things

Mary Lemmer @: I scream for Gelato

Patti Smith @: The Braille Embossinator: Technology for the Visually Impaired and Disabled

Aaron Worsham @: Why Geeks Love Wood

Devon Persing @: Ambient Librarianship, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Job

Linda Diane Feldt @: There is a free lunch – and twitter helps to find it.

Carl Wright @: How to spin a rope

— BREAK —

Jack Zaientz @: The Silver Age of American Jewish Music is Happening Now! And Why We’re Missing It.

Garrett Scott @: Rosicrucian Barber-Orators, Humanist Doodles, and a Bible Dictionary amid the Cherokee.

Brenda E. Bentley: These Buns are Made for Walking

Bill Van Loo: Are our kids technologically literate?

Peggy Daub: What was Galileo thinking about 400 years ago today?

Aaron Santos: How Many Licks Does It Take?

Angela Kujava @: The Uprising Behind the Robot Store or, Why One-On-One Attention is Crucial for our Students.

David Bloom @: Why Sex Is Great

Ignite 2 Call for Speakers

Ignite 2 will be held Monday, November 2nd at Blau Auditorium (capacity 500), thanks to the Entrepreneur and Venture Club!

We’re looking for interesting speakers to deliver talks in the Ignite format: 5 minutes, 20 slides, auto-advancing every 15 seconds. Come explain your passion, and spread the word! If you know of someone you’d love to see at Ignite 2, tell them about it and ask them to participate! To find out how and why to give an Ignite talk, check out Scott Berkun’s great Ignite talk on the subject. We also ask our speakers to read and the TED commandments and take them to heart.

All speakers should fill out the talk proposal form, even if you put your name on another list in the past.

The application deadline is 11:59pm, October 7th, 2009, and selected speakers will be notified by October 14th, 2009. We’re looking forward to hear what you have to say!

Ignite Book Club

shopclassIf you have a chance, take a look at Shop Class as Soulcraft, by Matthew Crawford. I think it will really speak to the Ignite audience on several levels, and hopefully get you to look at the world in a different way. In short, Crawford has a PhD in Political Philosophy, but finds his business repairing vintage European motorcycles more intellectually rewarding than the ‘normal’ career path at a think tank. He expands on this to champion the intellectual attributes of the manual trades, and ranges from how you should really advise a young person deciding on a career (given that a lot of knowledge work can actually be menial and easily outsourced), to how understanding and being able to repair your physical possessions is important to the spirited person’s sense of self-worth.

I think the ideas in this book are all over the place right now, in our culture generally and in Ann Arbor in particular. If you attend a GO Tech meeting you’ll see people engaging with their environment by making Rep-Rap machines or fabricating their own epoxy-granite lathe. At the cinema you can see Julia Child empowering household cooks to make their own mayonnaise from scratch. And at Ignite you can see talks like how to gather your own weather satellite images or make your own camping gear or electronic music.

So have a look, I think you’ll find it rewarding. You’ll have something to talk about with that interesting person you’re going to meet at intermission at Ignite 2. Here’s Mathew Crawford on the Colbert Report a month ago:

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Matthew Crawford
www.colbertnation.com
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