Brady and team would have us believe that Ignite! Seattle 7′s lineup of speakers has “some of the most ingenious, fascinating and inspiring geeks from across the world (or at least in or around Puget Sound)”. I believe it, because I’ve been to a couple previous Ignite! events and had an absolute blast.

I suppose it would be polite to say that I’m looking forward equally to all the presenters, but that’s not true. Of course it’s not true – it wouldn’t be human nature if you didn’t have just a skosh more anticipation for either (a) friends’ presentations, (b) presentations from people you’ve seen before and KNOW are great at the format, or (c) presentations on topics that you personally enjoy. Having said that, and with the requisite apologies to those who haven’t (yet) made the following list, here’s what I’m looking forward to on Monday night:

Mehal Shah (mehals) – Fighting Dirty in Scrabble. I love Scrabble and am (cough) the ongoing family champion. Have you read Word Freak yet? If you’re truly into Scrabble, you have to read this book.

Mónica Guzmán (moniguzman) – Addiction! Staying afloat in the age of the stream. I saw what you might call a draft of this topic at May’s BarCamp, and it generated a LOT of commentary. I’m guessing Mónica, being the consummate listener and editor that she is, has taken the best of the feedback and has come up with a superb presentation.

Jessica Hagy (thisisindexed.com) tells us which lies to ignore. I’m looking forward to this one simply because I’m fascinated by Jessica’s website, thisisindexed.com, and the brain behind it. If I’m crafting invitations to an ideal dinner party, and I’m not required to have actually met the person, Jessica is currently on my list.

Regarding the actual content of Jessica’s presentation, I have no idea what she’ll say, but I have an ongoing internal dialog going about a possibly-related topic that I’ll tentatively name here – “relevant frame failure”. This is the misguided notion that accidents of locale, time, or degrees of separation affect how important certain events really are.

Example: A cat gets stuck in a tree up the street and the fire department is called. KING-5 news sends a mobile TV production van to record poor kitty’s peril. On the other side of the world, a Sunni suicide bomber kills 36 Shia worshipers during Ashura. Which is more important? Using Jessica’s terminology, which can we ignore?

I can almost guarantee which one would get more tongues wagging down here at the local Starbucks. Chino-clad attorneys and track-suited moms would think it was just AMAZING that their neighborhood was on TV! .

Knowing what little I know about Jessica from her website, I can guess that her presentation will have a lot more humor and tongue-in-cheek references than my cheerless digression above. And in general, Ignite! is always a fun event – the audience is engaged, the speakers are self-deprecatory and everyone walks away enlightened, amused, and stimulated.

Details:

Ignite! Seattle 7
Monday, August 3rd, 2009
7:00 – 11:00 PM
King Cat Theater, 2130 6th Avenue

See you there!