Ignite

How Any Enginerd Can Date a Beautiful Woman

Ignite Seattle 10 is coming up just around the corner on June 14th, so mark your calendars. They had a call for submissions and I thought, “What the heck. But what to present on? It needs to be funny, but also relevant. And not a shill for some product.”

As it turned out, I had already asked this question from the last time I wanted to present at Ignite Boulder. I flipped through the comments and decided that Jeff’s suggestion on How Any Man Can Pick Up Beautiful Women would be good starting point.

I submitted my topic suggestion with the following description:

I am a nerd, and I am an engineer.

How do I know this? Because I was drawing schematics of Star Trek related devices when I was in 5th grade, I ran my own web server from my home when I was in 9th grade, and, most importantly, I just (well, a year ago) graduated from the Colorado School of Mines with a BS in Engineering, Specialty in Electrical Systems, Area of Special Interest in Mechanical Systems.

Now, I work for an aerodefensespace1 corporation, as an engineer.

And I’m dating a beautiful woman; actually, that’s not quite true.

But I have learned a lot about being an enginerd and being able to talk to women. And have them talk to me.

So, just because I haven’t found the “love of my life,” the Deanna Troi to my Will Riker, doesn’t mean that you can’t benefit from what I’ve learned.

It’s a shoe-in to win, right? Not quite. Unfortunately, I was not selected for the round of Ignite talks (they had a record number of entries). So you’ll have to wait for now.2

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  1. I thought about shortening this to “aerodeface” ↩

  2. Story of my life…. ↩

Ignite Seattle 9 and The Big Blog, Do It

I’m going to Ignite Seattle 9 tonight! And you should come! It’s going to be at the King Cat Theatre1 tonight, from 7-10pm. Admission is $5 at the door (you can’t buy tickets a head of time) and you must be at least 21, because like all good things in life, there will be C2H6O2 present.

What is this Ignite Seattle and why should I come? you ask? Easy: Ignite is a presentation format where each presenter gets a deck of 20 slides that automatically advance every 15 seconds. Five minutes later, you find that you are slightly more educated on topics ranging from The History of the Mustache, How to properly prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse, and the slightly more practical How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Counterfactuals. Sometimes serious, sometimes nerdy, always funny. There’s no reason not to come.

I went to my first Ignite in Boulder (Ignite Boulder 3), so this will be my second Ignite presentation and I’m thoroughly looking forward to going to this one. I’m also hoping to hang out with The Big Blog at the Burke Museum3 for their special 1st Thursday meetup with free admission to the Burke, plus special guest Julia Swan: 5 – 6:30 p.m.

Photo of Andrew Hyde © 2009 Stepan Mazurov, used with permission under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA

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  1. 2130 6th Avenue,
    Seattle, Washington 98121  ↩

  2. ethanol, aka beer ↩

  3. NE 45th Street & 17th Ave NE ↩

What To Talk About?

On February 18th at 6pm, Ignite Boulder will be holding their third night of presentations. The idea is simple, I have 20 slides that automatically advance after 15 seconds and I can use them to talk about whatever I want.

Anything.

So, if you could hear me talk for just five short minutes, what would you like me to talk about? The topic can either be funny or serious. The current leading ideas, that other people are presenting on so I can’t do but am including them so you have an idea of what the types of topics could be, include:

I have currently made my stand with “Installing WordPress“, which will cover how to install WordPress 2.7, including setting up your mySQL database, how to download and install plugins and themes. I’m currently ranked 20th and only the top six vote getters will present. But, with your help, I think I can do better!

So, what what you like to hear me talk about?

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