Speaker Review: From Giant Killer to TV Station: A Look at Daves in History by Dave Joyner

Dave Joyner, brilliant speaker at Ignite London #2 and now Ignite London #3 organiser sums up his speaker experience at the last ignite event . Let us know if you would like to write a post about your Ignite experiences!

I’d been aware of the Ignite format since it was first brought to the UK by the Ignite Cardiff team, so when Dan told me that he and Amy were going to establish Ignite London, I was very excited to participate in the project as an attendee. The range and quality of talks gave me food for thought and I started formulating ideas should a second event come about. I put together a proposal for Ignite London 2 and was lucky enough to be selected to speak. I talk a lot, sometimes in a professional capacity, often at length and often to audiences who are there under sufferance. The beauty of Ignite is that you will find an amazingly open minded, supportive audience, there to be enlightened, entertained and inspired. Despite hours of preparation my talk didn’t quite go to plan. I’d filled my head with hundreds of facts about the various great people in history that have shared my name, carefully selected the images of Daves I wanted to enthuse about and dreamt up a basic theme. When faced with more than two hundred eager faces, surging adrenaline fuelled by free beer and the relentless advancing slides, quite a bit of that went right out the window. In the fifteen seconds that each slide is visible you can only say about thirty to forty words, but as you can see from the video, you can do an awful lot of pointing.

I wasn’t the slickest speaker of the night, didn’t get the biggest laughs or have any blog or product to push. But that’s not really the point. I’d like to think that I gave people something to think about, introduced them to some people they would otherwise not have thought about, entertained and had a lot of fun myself. I’d urge you to put any fears aside, think up a proposal and speak at Ignite London 3. You won’t regret it.