The evening is over, the winners have spent the night reading their books in the glow of their new, special-order Flashies desk-lamp trophies, and the rest of us have had an evening to ponder last night’s Flashies awards ceremony and, like good bloggers everywhere, relate the occasional burst of helpful feedback in between mortar rounds lobbed from West Internetistan.

First of all, I had a fun time.  I think Seattle has relatively few of these type of dress-up soirees where the smart geeky people can mingle over canapés and cocktails.

And I’m an optimistic guy.  So I know that next year the Flashies will be better.  This is the first year as a live event, and it showed.  Not so much logistically, but in flow, in feel, in tone, in real-world hiccups that couldn’t be well anticipated, etc.  More to come on that.  But first:

WHAT WENT WELL

The venue is hard to beat.  The Sky Church area at the EMP is gorgeous and visually stunning and for a moment there I wished it was 1992 and The Doors were on repeat.

The hosts and hostesses were uniformly helpful and everpresent.

The buffet was varied and tasty.

The categories were unusual and in some cases interesting (I’ll have more to say about categories and nominees in a minute, though).  “Biggest Tech Debacle” is a category you just can’t help but love.

The orange color theming was a hit, including the ties worn by John Cook and Todd Bishop.

WHAT DIDN’T GO WELL

Well, crud.  Where to start.

First of all, I thought that there were some obvious misses in list of categories.  As one example, philanthrophic donations from members of Seattle’s tech sector being an obvious example of a feel-good category that everyone can get behind.  In general, I thought the categories were a little *too* offbeat and unusual.

I thought that the nominees in many cases exhibited what we call “inside baseball” analysis – John Cook and Todd Bishop are as connected to local tech news as anybody, and it showed in the, well, arcane nature of some of the nominees.  Not only the nominees, but in the winners.  As an example: Shwetak Patel, a professor at the UW, won in the category “Newsmaker of the Year” for his role in the development of Zensi and subsequent sale to Belkin.  Yet, if you do a Google news search for “Shwetak Patel”, you get – zero results.  He seems like a truly nice guy, and the type of smart, high-energy contributor that Seattle needs – but newsmaker of the year?  Really?

Next: Scope.  The nominees ranged from the relatively unknown (see above), to the mega-known (Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer).  Maybe more attention could be paid to targeting a certain niche/theme/area that would ensure that (a) nominees mostly came from the groups sponsoring, attending, or reporting on the Flashies, and (b) that winners would actually show up.  I’m actually very surprised at some of the no-shows, not only among winners but among nominees.  Again, this is probably first-year underwear peeking out under the skirt.

Next: Wine.  Bleh.  Whatever the red was, I’m pretty sure that Wine Spectator hasn’t gotten their hands on it.  OK, that was petty.  I’m a blogger, sue me.

Next: Anchor.  By this I mean that the categories lacked an obvious “anchor” category, the big one, the one that everyone just KNOWS is the one award to win above all others.  I’m guessing that as former hard-news guys, that John and Todd were thinking “Story of the Year” was the one to want, but I don’t know if the majority of the audience or the voters shared the same sentiment.  As a result, there was a lack of natural dramatic buildup to the events as the evening went on.

Related: the event itself was too short.  Maybe 45 or 50 minutes of actual awards banter?  TechFlash might consider some interstitial presentations from the nominees for the “big category” (see above) as a way to build interest an excitement for the final winner.

Finally, I’m not convinced that the dual-host thing worked out for the best.  The banter between John and Todd sometimes worked, but sometimes seemed a little under-rehearsed.

WHAT’S NEXT

I predict that the awards will take place again next year, and that a lot of the first-year kinks will be worked out, and that in five or ten years’ time Seattle’s tech community will be able to host two or three annual awards programs, each focusing on a slightly different niche.

In the meantime, to the Flashies winners and nominees – kudos, congratulations, and I’m looking for big things from you and TechFlash in the next year!

Sometimes you walk out of an event and just think to yourself, “wow.”  Last night I walked out of the King Cat Theater unable to find any more descriptive adjectives to summarize what continues to be THE event of the Seattle geek scene.  Ignite Seattle 11 was a success in every sense of the word.

What worked?  First of all, the speaker lineups continue to be super high-quality.  Second, the organization of the event, led by Brady Forrest of O’Reilly but capably supported by an awesome volunteer team (including friends Randy Stewart and Justin Martenstein), is excellent and you can tell that the team has really gelled.  Third, the crowd brings an infectious, encouraging, and collaborating energy that you just can’t replicate.

I have to start out by giving mad props to Todd Bishop of TechFlash, who had the misfortune to be speaking when the power cord to the projector got inadvertently yanked.  While a lesser man (me) would have melted out of embarrassment or anxiety, Todd showed remarkable grace under pressure and waited a few minutes until the team got the issue sorted out, then calmly finished an interesting presentation on Seattle Geek History.

I had drinks beforehand with friends Andrew Hyde and Sarah Novotny, and, as it happened, Andrew was one of last night’s speakers, giving a great and personal talk on minimalism and the “cult of less”.  Sarah and I got to see a preview of his talk as he was practicing at the Rob Roy, and it was thought-provoking and inspirational.  Andrew is starting an 18-month trip around the world, visiting 61 countries and carrying everything he owns in a single backpack.  Safe and happy travels, Andrew! Follow his journeys on Twitter at @andrewhyde.

Speaking of grace under pressure, my friend Tom Music gave a funny talk about his recent battle with lymphoma.  I don’t think I’ve ever cheered when the word “Lymphoma” was shown to me before, but Tom has a wit and self-deprecating humor that is infectious and endearing.  I’ve witnessed Tom’s challenges and am amazed and in awe of his strength, resilience, and ability to stay smiling.  Good for you Tom; great talk and I’m very glad you were on stage last night.

Yet another friend, Jenny Ingram, a fellow Ragnar team member and famous blogger/vlogger, gave a talk about “how to get famous on the internet without taking your clothes off.”  I usually just take the easy route, but Jenny may have convinced me to pay attention to things like setup, lighting, props, background noise, and promotion.  It was really nice to see Jenny and her husband Paul and I hope to see them again soon.

Jacob Applebaum, who works with Wikileaks in some capacity (it’s all sort of mysterious to me) gave a really interesting presentation on “going dark” – which touched on privacy, secure communications, intrusive government spying, and corporate collaboration.  I really liked it and speaking as a guy who was geekily into PGP way back in the day, I’m surprised that more products and services don’t have privacy “baked in”, as Jacob might say. You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @ioerror.

The other talk I wanted to call out was by Michelle Bates, who sort of kept the theme of minimalism going with a riveting presentation on plastic-camera photography.  You can really get some interesting images with a cheap piece of hardware.

I’ll say one other thing about the talks in general – unlike some previous Ignite events I’ve attended, there wasn’t a single talk that stood out head and shoulders above the rest.  I think this speaks to the growing tendency for *all* the Ignite presentations to be really high quality.

Sadly, because I was drinking beer and catching up with friends, I missed the icebreaker, which was a collaborative puzzle-solving exercise dreamed up by speaker and friend Roy Leban (and Justin Martenstein? Not sure).  When I walked in, the front of the theater was packed with participants who seemed to be having a great time.

I’ll close with a word or two about community.  Although the range of topics presented at Ignite events is really broad, there’s a palpable sense of community, and I think it’s driven by a real curiosity and desire for exploration on the part of the audience.  Not a lot of moss grows on Ignite attendees, who seem to me to be the sort to constantly seek out new challenges, new creative outlets, reinvigoration, and reinvention.  It’s heady and magical to be surrounded by these sorts of folks and I love to be able to walk into a crowd of hundreds and stop every few yards or so and chat with yet another great person I’ve gotten to know over the past few years.

Last night the dynamic duo from TechFlash, John Cook and Todd Bishop, hosted a couple hundred people at Spitfire to celebrate the anniversary of the TechFlash launch and get a little holiday cheer on.  I was there representing Seattle 2.0 as part of the trivia team contest.  I joined Seattle 2.0 founder Marcelo Calbucci, Brian Westbrook, and Shauna Causey and twelve other teams in coming up with answers to a couple dozen questions, some of which were easy (where did Microsoft move from in 1979?*) to the incredibly difficult (which original blogging service started out of a Mercer Hall dorm room?*)

Overall our team did fairly well – somewhere in the middle of the pack, I think – but the big winners were Ben Huh and the Cheezburger team, who tied for 1st but won the grand prize based on a tiebreaking question – how many “shakes” has the Urbanspoon iPhone app had as of November?*.  Congrats cheezburgers, and now stop idling your days away reading TechFlash and get back to work giving me pictures of cats perched on the toilet with the caption “I HAZ CATSTIPATION”. lol.

The Spitfire was an excellent choice for a venue – it was crowded, but not OMG-I-can-see-down-your-ear-canal crowded, and the Spitfire staff were busy and helpful.  There was a hosted bar for the first hour, and the buffet was, as my friend Marina Martin would say, nom.  Of course with my ongoing fitness quest I ate fruit, but…

I really liked meeting some new people last night, and the crowd was different than some of my regular stops, so I’ll be going back to future TechFlash events for certain.  Everyone was in a fun, friendly, networking frame of mind.  Until the trivia contest started – then the kid gloves came off and the competitive fires started burning white-hot.

You can go to the TechFlash site to view pictures from the event, and also check out the livestream from the back room.

Thanks to John and Todd for contributing their time and energy to yet another great Seattle tech event!  And thanks to the sponsors for their contributions – Reaxion, BDO Seidman, Denali Advanced Integration, and the UW-Bothell MBA program.

* answers: Albuquerque, LiveJournal, and 413.2 million, respectively