Here are my favorite photos from Ignite Seattle 12

Buster Benson

Karen Cheng

Adam Philipp

Joel Grus

Gregory Heller

House of Cards

See all my photos from Ignite Seattle 12 on Flickr

Jacob Applebaum

Todd Bishop

Roberto Hoyos

Roy Leban

Lisa Bronwyn

Jenny Lam

More in my Ignite Seattle photostream on Flickr

What do I do with all those photos? This is a question that I frequently get asked from folks at events I photograph.

At the last Ignite event, I took 1600 photos and posted 46 of them (just about 3%). Not all of the unposted photos were duds, but they weren’t as good as the photos that I did post. While I want to thoroughly cover an event, I try to post only the best photos of the night.

Portraits in a Dark Theater

Taking pictures at many events (especially Ignite) are challenging due to unique and difficult lighting situations. Couple that with people who are moving around a lot and talking about something that they are passionate about, capturing a passable photo, let alone a good one can be hard.

I aspire to always 1. make the person look as good as possible and 2. capture the essence of the speaker and their material. Occasionally, I succeed.

Looking over my shoulder

Here’s a quick, three minute video (really a super-fast slideshow) that shows you the photos I posted among all the pictures that I took. Hopefully it conveys the pruning and curating process I go through before I post a photo set.

You can watch the HD version on YouTube and the final photo set from Ignite Seattle 7 is here.

Here are my favorite pix from Ignite Seattle 7. See more about Ignite Seattle here.

Seattle PI’s Big Blogger, Mónica Guzmán implores us to put down the iPhone

Todd Sawicki talks about the beauty of ballet

Jessica Hagy on Lies to Ignore

Mehal Shah tells us how to Fight Dirty in Scrabble

Scissors beats paper

More pictures after the jump.

Here are my favorite pix from April 29th’s Ignite Seattle 6 event.

How and Why to Give an Ignite Talk – Scott Berkun

Intangible Method – Scotto Moore

The Psychology of Incompetence – Ron Burk

Geek Girl: A life Story – Maya Bisineer

Decoding Sticks and Waves – Ken Beegle

The Sanity Hacks of a Stay At Home Mom – Jen Zug

Public Library Hacking – Dawn Rutherford

Click below for all of my Ignite Seattle 6 pictures.

After it’s globe stomping success, Ignite Seattle returns to Seattle on April 29, 2009. From its humble beginnings here in Seattle, Brady and Bre’s 5 minute talks, with auto-advancing slides (aka a night out at the bar with geeks) has expanded to a world wide phenomenon (and a show from O’Reilly).

There have been Ignite events held in Baltimore, Sydney, New York, Paris, Des Moines, Leeds, Denver, Cardiff, Anchorage, Budapest, San Francisco and in three separate locations in Oregon (damn, you guys have a lot of geeks).

If Ignite hasn’t (ahem) caught fire in your town, you can set one up. Brady Forrest has provided a plethora of helpful hints here.

Editor’s Note: Not all Ignite Talks have naked Hasselhoff pictures

April 29th’s event promises to be a good one (a partial schedule has already been posted) and with a new venue to boot:

After a long search Ignite will be at the King Cat Theatre in Downtown Seattle. It’s a great space that has a bar, 700+ theatre-style seats and a great stage. This venue will allow everyone to have a seat and should provide us a good home for some time.

Here’s a little video to tide you over until then.

Ok, technically, this was Ignite Portland, but Jason did do a version of this in Seattle.

Here are my pix from various Ignite events.

Ignite Seattle

Actually, other than being tired from having a four week old child at home and shooting 1000 pictures (thankfully, I didn’t post all of them), this year’s Gnomedex was distinctively lacking in an aftermath.

No controversy (I think) and lots of great speakers, ideas and attendees wrapped this year’s meetup into the best Gnomedex yet. I met a lot of really nice folks who wanted to share their ideas, projects, tattoos and good will.

My top moments at Gnomedex this year

• Scott Maxwell – Mars Rover Driver
• Beth Kanter raising $3700 in aid for Cambodian kids
• The Hallway Conversations – always the best reason to go to Gnomedex, the people.

What happened at Gnomedex?

There are lots of great summaries of the show out there, so I won’t give you mine. Here are some of the best.

• CenterNetworks – Great overview and highlights from Rick Turoczy, whom I wish I met.
• Derek Miller – Gives his Twitters a full grown blog post
• Beth Kanter – The Value of Attending Gnomedex: Priceless
• Chris Brogan

Thank you

A huge thanks to Chris, Ponzi and the Gnomedex crew for all their hard work again this year. You guys put on the best show and attract the best folks time and time again. I’ve mentioned before that despite all my years in the Internet biz, Gnomedex 2006 was my first “Internet” conference. It’s now the only one I can’t miss every year.

Finally, Beth Kanter via Dave Delaney summed up Gnomedex 2008 in eleven words:

Use technology for good and it will make you feel good.

I’ve posted my pix from last night’s Ignite Seattle event.

Ignite Seattle is a tech geek meetup held semi-irregularly that brings out some of the best and brightest in the Puget Sound region.

Had a great time and hope the next one isn’t so far off in the future. Wish my pix were better, but I’m still new at this whole photography thing.

Here is a link to my photos on Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/stewtopia/

Feel free to use my photos in blog posts and what not, just link back here for attribution.

Ok, so it was a smidge warm inside. Why I thought wearing a long sleaved shirt was a good idea, I’ll never know.

I try very hard to not be one of those people who incessantly compare this to that, saying it was better when blah blah blah. I remember lamenting at Ignite 3 that the draconian format had lost it’s edge as people got more accustomed to doing 5 minute presentations with auto advancing slides.

Last night, I got over it.

Wow… what a great event last night. So many good speakers, so many good ideas. Thanks again Brady (and Bre, wherever you may be) for a great night out.

I took a lot of photos last night but didn’t take many notes. I’ll collect what I’ve found below.

• Fluvial has a behind the scenes video
• Great summaries of the talks from Brett Nordquist here.
• Nanotech speaker Deepak Singh offers his comments

Video from Bryan Zug and PowerPoints of the talks will be up on the Ignite Blog soon.

Oh ya, and Noonhat still scares the shit out of me.

See… I’m back on the bike. Really, I blog regularly… really.

Tonight in Seattle for one night only, Ignite! If you are a geek in Seattle and haven’t made it out to an Ignite Seattle event, you are truly missing out.

Bre Pettis and Brady Forrest from O’Reilly are brilliant hosts for what has been great fun. If you are a Maker, you’ll want to join in on the Paper Airplane Challenge at 6:30.

If you are in the social media scene, Chris Heuer will be on hand leading a meeting of the Social Media Club. He’s in town tonight to meet up with Seattle’s movers and shakers in the social media scene.

In either case, if you are perpetually late like me, don’t be late for the Ask Me Later presentations, which are guaranteed to be good, well, at least if they’re not, they only last 2 minutes. Being a little ADD addled, 2 minutes for an idea, a pitch, or a cause is a great way to get creativity flowing.

I’m pretty excited about going tonight as the first one was so much fun and I regretfully missed the second one, which was even bigger than the first.

Details from the site:

6:00 – Doors Open
6:30 – Paper Airplane Challenge Begins
8:00 – Break
8:30 – Ask Later Talks: Round 1 begins (full schedule)
9:15 – Break
9:45 – Ask Later Talks: Round 2 begins
10:30 – End of Ignite

Hope to see you there.