Press Release: Global Ignite Week Burns Up the UK

The first Global Ignite Week is being held this year from the 1^st to 5^th of March 2010 with great representation from across the UK including events in London, Bristol, Manchester and Cardiff. The global effort is truly international with events being held in six continents and 60 cities in locations as diverse as Cape Town, Casablanca, Anchorage and Bangalore.

Ignite was started in Seattle in 2006 by Brady Forrest of O’Reilly Radar and Bre Pettis of Make magazine. Since then hundreds of five minute talks have been given across the world. The idea is simple: presenters are required to stick to a rigid format of 20 slides, each of which changes automatically after 15 seconds, ensuring that presentations are exactly five minutes long. Topics range from tech and design to history and world events – the only rule is that talks cannot be about self-promotion, and that they adhere to the Ignite motto – ‘Enlighten us, but make it quick’

“We’ve been blown away by the response to Global Ignite Week,” said Ignite co-founder and O’Reilly Media Technical Evangelist Brady Forrest. “We were hoping for events in 40 cities, and now have commitments from volunteer organizers in 72 cities on every continent except Antarctica. And now that the space station has an Internet connection, we’re thinking about Ignite ISS.”

In the UK, a number of confirmed events are taking place during Global Ignite Week in London, Bristol, Manchester, and Cardiff, with a possible event being planned in Leeds. Some of the highlights include:

Monday  1 March 2010 – Ignite Manchester
MadLab, 36 – 40 Edge Street, Manchester, M4 1HN

Tuesday 2 March 2010 – Ignite London
The Luminaire, 311 Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR

Thursday 4 March 2010 – Ignite Bristol
The Polish Club, 50 St Paul’s Road, BS8 1LP

Thursday 4 March 2010 – Ignite Cardiff
Wales Millennium Centre, Bute Place, Cardiff CF10 5AL

Although Ignite is best experienced in person, many events, including those being held in the UK, will be video taped to make the talks available to viewers online. O’Reilly anticipates that at least 500 talks will be available on their site, to be launched in conjunction with Global Ignite Week.

“This will be our second Ignite London event and the response has been wonderful,” said Amy Thibodeau, Ignite London committee member. “We released the final batch of advance tickets last week and they sold out in under ten minutes. We also have some amazing speakers lined up, starting with our headliners Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing and Russell Davies of the Interesting Conference and Newspaper Club.”

Bristol has received a similarly enthusiastic response. According to Peter Blackman, one of the organizers, “Bristol is such a creative, independent minded city that it’s not really a surprise that the response to the first Ignite has been so positive. We’ve sold out, and been deluged with submissions for talks on subjects as diverse as futurology, swing dancing, comic book culture, and microloans in the developing world. We can’t wait for March 4^th to come around!”

Cardiff is looking forward to its biggest Ignite yet. “This is going to be the fourth Ignite Cardiff and we’re so pleased that each one just gets bigger and better,” said Claire Scantlebury, Ignite Cardiff co-organiser. “We’re in a world class venue with some incredible speakers – we’re really pleased to be taking part in something very inspirational, truly global, and having lots of fun while we’re doing it!”

Ignite Manchester is the newest confirmed event to be taking place during Global Ignite Week. “It is great that we can contribute to the ideas generated through Ignite in Manchester – we hope that this is the start of many,” said Steven Flower, one of the organisers.