Here are some of my favorite pix from the Seattle 2.0 Awards on May 7, 2009.

Jonathan Sposato

Glenn Kelman

Danielle Morrill

John Cook

Greg Huang

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.

Not completely in the vein of the rest of the blog, but I thought I would throw this out to see what I got from all y’all.

So, my brother, his wife and their 4 year old are visiting Seattle for the next several days and my sister in law is worried we’ll just sit around the house and talk rather than going out and doing everything their is to be done while they visit.

While I’ve lived in Seattle almost 2 years, I still don’t know the area that well (certainly not as well as natives) and I came up with a counter itinerary to their original.

For first time visitors (with a 4 year old) to Seattle, here’s what I recommend:

City neighborhoods tour

There is a lot to see here that doesn’t involve going inside and/or paying anything.

This could include:

Downtown

• Pike Place Market – ok, this one is dead obvious.
• Downtown Library – one of the most interesting pieces of architecture I’ve ever seen.
• REI Flagship Store – full rock climbing wall, outdoor track for test driving mountain bike. This may be the coolest store I’ve ever been to.
• Seattle Art Museum Sculpture Park (free) – very cool outdoor park with large amounts of running around space.
• Space Needle

Pioneer Square – oldest neighborhood in Seattle, hit Elliot Bay Books. I’m not sure if it’s the dirt or the old buildings that remind me of San Francisco the most.

Ballard
Chittenden Locks (free) – these are real, working locks for small, medium, large and xx-large boats. It’s really cool.

Fremont
The Troll, Lenin Statue and ICBM

Other trip ideas

Bainbridge Island Ferry (Free) – unless we take the cars.
I haven’t been to Bainbridge Island, but it sounds like a great place to visit. If nothing else, it’s a free ride across the Sound with sweeping views of downtown.

Snoqualmie Falls
Falls and town that were in Twin Peaks – taller than Niagra Falls

Golden Gardens or Alki Beach or Matthews Beach (free) –
in the city beach but only if it is nice and warm.

Discovery Park
Very large park (are we still in the city?)in Seattle with great views

Washington Park Arboretum and Japanese Tea Garden
As an aside, this is the first place I saw a bald eagle in the wild.

Rent Paddle Boats on Green Lake
Weather dependent.

Seattle Duck Tour
This is ridiculous, but maybe fun. Tour the city in vehicle that ultimately ends up in Lake Union and Portage Bay
$23 for adults $13 for kids.

Anything else?

Other thoughts and suggestions would be much appreciated.

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.