There were two main local sponsors at last week’s Ignite Seattle 5 event at the Capitol Hill Arts Center.

The first was Ontela, a local mobile-imaging startup. A really nice representative named Janette Fong got there early and was handing out drink tickets with the Ontela logo on them. I’d never heard of Ontela, but they have what looks to be a great product in a good niche, with high-powered backing. Strangely enough, they don’t have a consumer product, which makes me wonder why they sponsored something like Ignite — I can’t just jump on their website and try something out. My carrier (AT&T) has to roll out a product on Ontela’s platform, and even then it might be invisible to me in terms of branding. Maybe they just want to support the local startup scene, which is cool.

The second was Biznik, which I first ran into a few months ago. Their tagline is “Business Networking That Doesn’t Suck”, and the Ignite crowd seemed tailor-made for their pitch. But there wasn’t one (a pitch, I mean). I didn’t see any Biznikers hanging around out front, and it wasn’t until the end of Ignite when Brady put up the slide thanking the sponsors that I even realized that Biznik was there.

Now, there was a huge crowd, and much like startups in China, the Biznik rep only needed to reach 1% of the crowd to have a good ROI. But the whole thing got me to wondering about sponsorships — strategically (in Ontela’s example), as well as tactically (in Biznik’s example).

Promoting the sponsorship on the web would seem to be natural, but none of the three organizations mentioned say anything about the sponsorships on their websites. In the case of Ignite, that’s probably unacceptable to not throw a shout out to sponsors somewhere. They have references to both Ontela and Biznik, but they’re buried and the posts were in reference to Ignite 2 or 3 or something back in August 2007.

For Ontela and Biznik, not mentioning the event probably speaks to a strategic gap in their marketing. They could use a 360° scorecard or something

What do you think? Are strategy and tactics both essential for making the most out of local tech event sponsorships? Is one more important than the other?

OK — I butchered the headline. This blog is not the New York Times, and my only editor is the slightly fuzzy one between my ears. I just had to find some creative way to express how AWESOME the Ignite Seattle 5 event was last night at the Capitol Hill Arts Center. I haven’t had that much fun in a dark room full of men on Capitol Hill since [REDACTED]. Ha ha ha!

But seriously, the crowd was probably 85% male, 15% female, which in terms of geek events has to win Brady some sabermetrician’s award for gender balance.

First: a shout out to all my skillbit and twitter friends I saw at the event: Brian, Rob, Adam, Jocelyn, Amir, Leo, Matt, Lindsay, Leigh, Deepak, Adam, and Anders. I’m forgetting one or two. Nice to see everyone!

Next, to the talks themselves: This is a fantastic format. It makes PowerPoint fun again! The presenters have a fixed amount of time per slide and so as you’re listening to their presentation your brain is engaged with this meta-level analysis of how they’re doing relative to the clock. It definitely keeps you interested.

You can go online in a couple weeks and view the video. For now, I’m going to give out a few “Xideys” to my favorite presentations:

• MOST INFORMATIVE: This is a tough category, as there were many, many good presentations here. I’ll call it a tie between Noah Iliinsky, speaking about complex diagrams, and Adam Philipp, talking about patents, but really, all of them were informative.
• MOST THOUGHT-PROVOKING: Jordan Andersen, talking about opinion systems.
• MOST INSPIRATIONAL: This one has to be Ramez Naam’s talk on bottoms-up market democracies. I’d like to meet Ramez; he seems like a really interesting and engaged person.
• MOST FUN: Another close contest between Ryan McMinn’s hilarious Geek Dating Guide, and VJ Vijai’s talk on Hacking the Technical Interview.

I’ll definitely be back for the next Ignite event. Props to Brady Forrest for throwing such a great event.

Tuesday night I’m going to Ignite Seattle 5, the fifth in a series of geekfests hosted by Brady Forrest and Bre Pettis. It looks like a ton of fun and the last couple events in the series drew 350+ to the Capitol Hill Arts Center.

Check out videos of previous talks over here at blip.tv, and be sure to check out the talk schedule for Tuesday night here.

My most-looked forward to 15 minutes? Of course I’d like to say “all of them”, but it wouldn’t be very bloggy of me not to express an opinion (especially if said opinion is under-researched), so I’ll pick my top three talks in advance of the event, then pick my favorites after actually seeing them.

1. Justin Martenstein on The Six Hour Startup. After my great time at Seattle Startup Weekend in January, how could I not look forward to a talk about how to roll up that experience into a single afternoon? I can see where this trend is going. Next year we’ll all get together on Twitter between 9:00 and 9:10 one morning and launch the next Google-killer.
2. Todd Sawicki on The History of Online Advertising. because perspective is important, and because there are still many, many bites left on that apple.
3. Helen Cook on The Most Beautiful Game In The World. I love go. I’ve been playing on and off since college, when I got hooked on IGS and had my ass handed to me by random people around the world. Every now and then I get the urge to break out my ten or fifteen Kiseido titles and spend a few weeks re-immersing myself.

Honorable mention goes to Adam Philipp on How to Roll Your Own Patent Application. If you’re full of ideas, you’ll want to see this one. Full disclosure: I’ve seen a draft of this presentation already. You won’t want to miss it.