We’ve set up a site to help you find people with similar interests at tonight’s event:
May 2007 Archives
Our first Ignite Boston is filling up fast. Since we have limited space at Tommy Doyle’s, please RSVP for this event–held on Thursday, May 31 from 6 to 10pm–by sending email to IgniteBoston [at] oreilly [dot] com. With your RSVP, your name will be entered into a drawing to receive $300 worth of O’Reilly books! You must be present to win. (We won’t use your name for anything other than this raffle.) RSVPs are not required but appreciated.
The event’s location can be accessed via mass transit [Red Line, Busses] and is located at 96 Winthrop Street in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA.
Here’s a tentative agenda for the evening.
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 6:00-7:00pm | Socialize, mingle and talk tech with your fellow FOOs, alpha geeks, and techies from the greater Boston area. |
| 6:20-7:00Opm | Join a MAKE challenge team and participate in building bridges (how much weight can your bridge–made from less than 1K popsicle sticks–support?). |
| 7:00-7:10 | Brief intermission and set up. |
| 7:10-7:30 | Ignite Keynote - Scott Berkun will kick off our Ignite night with a talk about myths of innovation. |
| 7:35-8:40 | First 12 Ignite talks. Five minutes each. |
| 8:45-9:00 | Judging the Bridges and awarding Raffle prizes. |
| 9:00-10:00 | Final set of 12 presentations. Five minutes each. |
| 10:00-2:00am | Drinks, conversations, and socializing. |
See you there!
Tentative Ignite Talks
- Matt Welsh Havard University - CitySense: An Urban-Scale Wireless Sensor Network CitySense is a project underway at Harvard and BBN to roll out a network of 100+ wireless sensors all over Cambridge, MA, to monitor air quality, road traffic, and 802.11 conditions spanning the city. Every node will be a Linux-based embedded PC with 802.11a/b/g and will be fully programmable by end users. CitySense will support researchers across the globe who want to experiment with wireless mesh routing, distributed algorithms, and sensor networking. How will it work and what are some of the problems we have to solve to get there? Come hear about it. Got ideas for how CitySense could be used? We’d love to hear from you.
- William Pena - Generating User Contributions Through Operant Conditioning User contribution is generating tremendous growth and opportunity on the web, but there are two problems that few sites seem to have tackled adequately: too many contributions come from too few users, and too few users contribute repeatedly. Highly successful sites like Flickr, YouTube and Digg are not fully tapping their potential because they still persuade only a fraction of a percent of their users to contribute. “Clicker training” is a technique used by animal trainers to modify behavior in animals, an application of B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning. What if the techniques underlying clicker training were applied to web design in order to “train” users? That’s what I’m trying to discover with the website clickertraining.com. We’re trying to influence users who contribute to the website — e.g. post blog entries, comment on stories, vote in polls — to do so repeatedly in an effort to change the dynamics of user contribution on the web. I’d like to describe some of what is unique about how we reward contributions on clickertraining.com (a marker signal to mark preferred behavior and an intermittent schedule of positive reinforcement that is hidden from the user), and how that is informed by the science of behavioral psychology, in hopes that others may find new avenues for captivating users and encouraging repeat visits.
- Kes Sampanthar MetaMemes, LLC - Introducing ThinkCube Come hear proof that there’s more to creativity and innovation than just brainstorming. Entrepreneur and inventor Kes Sampanthar will give you a sneak peak at his brand new innovation tool, ThinkCube, due to hit the shelves next month. For individual or group play, ThinkCube introduces you to a whole new world of ideas. It’s part game, part methodology, and full of inspiration. ThinkCube is the first commercial product by MetaMemes, LLC, a small innovation start-up based in MetroWest Boston.
- Rick Treitman Virtual Ubiquity, Inc. - President, CEO Virtual Ubiquity, Inc. Rick Treitman is the founder of a Boston area startup working on a new approach to web-based word processing. The product is called Buzzword, and starting May 15 it will be available for educators and other influencers in a preview edition. It’s quite difficult to convey in words the coolness of this application. Anyone who has seen a demo has been quite surprised and impressed. Among those who have seen early demos, Buzzword is receiving rave reviews (virtub.com/buzz.html) and is resetting the bar for what’s possible in terms of building web-based applications. In short, Buzzword is a free, web-based word processor that is accessible from any web connection. Although Buzzword is not strictly an “education tool” we believe it’ll find a strong acceptance in secondary and post-secondary education, (and perhaps among younger students) and teachers, and are therefore focusing our initial effort on that population. Buzzword will be available in a beta 1.0 version in the Fall of this year.
- James Turner O’Reilly Media - It is often said that the diversity of Open Source is one of its major strengths. I argue that we’re fostering the wrong kind of diversity. When we find an itch, our solution is too often to build a brand-new back-scratcher, rather than see if we can work with an existing one, extending it to our needs. As I discussed in my recent essay, “The Virtues of Monoculture”, too many choices can turn people off to using a technology, and drive them towards a vendor that offers a clear solution, even it it’s an inferior one. I’ll discuss why ego and borderline Asperger’s social skills lead to a plethora of competing projects all singing basically the same tune, and will propose that the ethos to be pursuing is diversity inside projects, not between them.
- Greg Raiz Raizlabs Corp PicMe - The world is full of chaos and fresh mountains of data, emails and photos are created every day. The design tools and development methodologies we use today are centered around organizing chaos. This is a bad way to think about computers and software. Folder, tags, meta-data even file-names place the focus on organizing the data rather then consuming it. So many people have such elaborate systems for ‘getting things done’ that they don’t get anything done. This talk explores design and development methodologies for searching, exploring and filtering large data sets rather than organizing them.
- Brian Jepson O’Reilly Media Providence Geeks - Taking Microcontrollers to RI’s WiMax Network The Rhode Island statewide wireless network (RI-WINS) is currently in a pilot stage with three towers covering parts of Providence, Newport, and Narragansett Bay. I’m prototyping a few small, solar-powered systems for data acquisition and interactive art installations that are connected to the wireless networks. In descending order of size and power consumption, these include: a Linux-powered Mini-ITX system, the Make Microcontroller Kit, and an Arduino. In this talk, I’ll show the hardware guts that are going into it and explain how it all goes together
- Jason McIntosh Volity Games - Volity - an open platform for multiplayer games Volity is an open platform for multiplayer, Internet-based games. A language-independent set of protocols that rely on Jabber (XMPP), Volity frees game developers from worrying about common needs like player authentication, messaging, and record-keeping, allowing them to instead concentrate on the specific logic and user interface work their games require. Volity exists right now as an open network (http://volity.net) that anyone can add their own games to, and which players can enjoy through a free, Java-based game browser. This talk will present a brief description of how it all works, where the project is heading next, and how game-happy hackers can help take it there.
- Ed Manlove attend Providence Geeks - What a bunch of Adult Fans of Lego has to teach us about web forums The majority of web-based forums use the phpBB style for presenting discussion forums through a web-based interface. But their presentation can learn alot from what a bunch of adult fans of lego have done. Over at Lugnet.com, Todd Lehman and Suzanne Rich Green have created what should be the model for web-based forums. Their layout and presentation of their discussion forums, news.lugent.com, provide a full range of information at every view. Starting at each newsgroup you are presented with the latest messages, a listing of sub-newsgroups, and a set of resources related to the specific newsgroup you are viewing. If we examine this view a little more, we see the newsgroups are presented in two catagories, General and adminstartive topics and specific Lego genre topics, for organization, the brief message display gives an idea of what the person is saying, who is saying it, when the said it and to which newsgroups they are saying it. Overall I have about 32 notations pointing out features or UI designs which makes their site very useful. Compare this to the phpBB style of topic view where you get linear list of topics giving the subject, who wrote it, how many replies and views have been made on that topic, and who and when the last person respond. And the topic view provides a forced linear view possible spanning several pages of messages. My talk would highlight as many of the beneficial features of news.lugnet.com LUGNET as possible in given time/slide limit and contrast to the phpBB style under the (not yet finalized) catagories of “Click depth to information”, “Customization and Personalization”, “Usability of the Interface”, “Ease of entry for newcomers”. Note: I have no affliation with LUGNET other then contributing an occasional newsgroup post under lugnet.robotics.
- Rod Begbie - Powerful Point Presentations Conceived after sitting through a miserable morning of presentations during my first day at my current job, some tips on how to use the big screen behind you to wow the crowd, sell your idea, and avoid becoming Powerpoint’s bitch.
- Andy Oram O’Reilly Media, Inc. - How do you know if your docs are any good? Discussion on how to improve documentation.
- Jo Lee - RingTones08.com - Ring It On! RingTones08.com is a free site that lets people rant and rave about the 2008 election by posting and sharing ringtones. We are a nation blessed with politicians whose statements practically beg to be ringtones. “Mission Accomplished,” “Last Throes of the Insurgency,” “Howard Dean’s scream.” Don’t let these pearls of political incompetence go to waste. Roll your own ringtone and let ‘em rip at shopping malls, bus stations, restaurants, your workplace…. We’ve been a nation of political zombies long enough. Exercise your freedom of speech and ring!
- Keith Erskine Padpaw, Inc. - My talk is going to examine what we’ve learned about translating the human actions of community groups into a mobile service. I’ll relate our experience about technology adoption by parents, the role kids can play as educators, and what’s going to guide us in the future. I’m one of the founders of Padpaw . Padpaw is a service that helps groups organize and communicate using the computer you carry with you; your mobile phone. For the last 12 months, my colleagues and I have researched, built and delivered our service. Startups are more of a journey than a job, and I’d like to share our experience with the challenges of translating human behavior into a business.
- Lakshmi Sadasiv O’Reilly Media - Body of Knowledge: Using Metaphor and Muscle Memory to Demonstrate Technical Concepts Physics and other highly technical subjects are often taught by some combination of blackboard lecture, lab demonstration, and problem solving. I’d like to demonstrate how one central but hard-to-apply physics concept–symmetry–can explained by physically moving through a series of poses and “dance” motions and that this method is, in fact, more effective than a more traditional PowerPoint-based explanation. I’d close with the idea gleaned from the Head First series but slightly modified: that part of our legacy brain is its ability to abstract complex concepts by using our sense of our own body to create a metaphoric mapping of the concept, and how we, as people who need to get our technical ideas across quickly to a wide variey of audiences, can use our “face” time more effectively. The talk would have exactly three PDF slides and roughly two minutes of me jumping around, sometimes with a mirror in my hand. This talk ia adapted from a paper I wrote on musical metphor, a talk I gave on CPT for a nuclear physics seminar, and my experiences as a recitation instructor in the physics department at the University of New Mexico.
- John Resig Mozilla Corporation jQuery JavaScript Library - Meta-Programming with JavaScript Take the comparably simple concept of DOM scripting with JavaScript, drill down to its essential core, and distill it into a single library, which you then convert into its own programming language. This is Meta-Programming with JavaScript.
- Andrew Odewahn O’Reilly Media - Using Yahoo! Pipes in Google A short demonstration of how to use Yahoo! Pipes to merge multiple RSS feeds, filter out items of interest, and visualize them in Netvibes.
- Matt Douglas MyPunchbowl.com MyPunchblog - Break through the noise: How a run a press campaign for a new startup When you start a company, you don’t have any money to spend on lavish marketing campaigns. So how do you get on the map? You work with press people and bloggers to get coverage for your new product. What are the most effective ways to run this kind of PR campaign? What should you avoid? How much is enough? In 5 minutes, Matt Douglas will speak about his experience and what he’s learned along the way.
- Li Hong Babson College - I want to talk about the needed revolution of current university system. It hadn’t been changed in almost hundreds of years and I believe it’s time to change and Internet will make the change happens faster.
- Robert Swarr - First, I would argue that JSF is a good choice for a UI framework for future web applications in that it uses an event-driven, component architecture, which is independent of the rendering engine. Next, I would argue that the one thing holding back JSF is JSP. JSP was designed to merge static and dynamic content within a request/response model. To some degree JSF and JSP are out of sync. We’re in a different world now where users expect a web application to exhibit many of the features of a desktop application. Web applications such as Google Suggest point the way to the kind of Rich Internet Applications users want and we need to develop. JSF together with AJAX can help us develop these kinds of applications. Some vendors provide Ajax packages that are tightly integrated with JSF. One example is Red Hat/JBoss ajax4jsf.
- William Dwyer Boston Users Groups Southern New England network users group - Area users groups We would like to take the 5 minutes to tell people about the large variety of user groups in the greater Boston area. Marcee Henon from O’Reilly can vouch for me. It may be someone else that does the presentation because it is a long ride from me from RI. I am on the executive board og BUG and president of SNENUG.
Technorati Tags: Boston, Cambridge, Event, Geeks, Ignite, O’Reilly Media, Speakers
MAKE Challenge: Building Bridges
To kick-off our Ignite Boston evening, we’re having a MAKE competition–Building Bridges–from 6 to 7pm. Come with a group of friends and blueprints, or meet some people at the bar and form an ad hoc team!
Goal:
Using 1,000 or fewer popsicle sticks, construct a bridge that can withstand more human weight than your competitors’ bridges. We’ll keep weighing them down until they’re destroyed!
Requirements:
- Bridge must span 16″; each end will rest on a block.
- You must use 1,000 or fewer popsicle sticks (these are provided for you).
- Only glue guns may be used to adhere the sticks together. Each team will be provided with at least one glue gun, but bring your own if you have one!
- Feel free to bring your own LEDs, wire, and batteries to make your bridge light up!)
Contest judging will take place at 8:45, so your bridge will have lots of time to dry.
Prize:
- Glory, of course!
- And, a mystery prize will be awarded to the winning team!
The first Ignite Boston will be on Thursday, May 31, from 6 to 10pm at Tommy Doyle’s in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA. From 6-7pm, mingle and talk tech with your fellow FOOs, alpha geeks, and techies from the greater Boston area. Join a MAKE challenge team and participate in building bridges (how much weight can your bridge–made from less than 1K popsicle sticks–support?) After that, we’ll have a special keynote address from author Scott Berkun (The Myths of Innovation; The Art of Project Management) kicking off our Ignite night. Then, onto guest speakers who’ll catch you up on the cool, new, innovative stuff going on in technology today. Don’t blink or you’ll miss their lightning-fast, five-minute presentations. During intermissions, get a cold beer and chat with speakers, sponsors, and O’Reilly’s own editors. Join us Thursday, May 31, for a fun, energetic evening of talking, learning, making, collaborating (and drinking!). Check out the events and activities of our Ignite events on the West Coast.
RSVP
If you plan to attend, email IgniteBoston at oreilly dot com for the chance to win $300 worth of O’Reilly books of your choosing. You must be present to win.Presentation Guidelines
Ignite is a user-generated event. If you’re interested in speaking, then submit a proposal for consideration. Presentations must:- Be no longer than 5 minutes
- Be on an innovative topic (no sales pitches, please!)
- Be viewable on a PC [a MacBook Pro with Powerpoint and Keynote, and PDF] with standard AV equipment
We’ve set up a site to help people with similar interests connect at Ignite Boston:
If you plan to attend, email IgniteBoston at oreilly dot com for the chance to win $300 worth of O’Reilly books of your choosing. You must be present to win. (We won’t sell or rent these names.)
Return to the Ignite Boston blog.
Much of what we know about innovation is wrong.
Scott Berkun’s keynote address will romp through the history of innovation, dispelling many of the mythologies we’ve constructed. Loosely based on his recently released book The Myths of Innovation (O’Reilly), Scott’s talk will help you to recognize these myths and understand why they’re popular–even if you don’t believe in them–while teaching you how to use the truth to become an effective innovator today.
About Scott
Scott Berkun worked on the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft from 1994-1999 and left the company in 2003 with the goal of writing enough books to fill a shelf. The Myths of Innovation (O’Reilly, 2007) is his second book; he wrote the 2005 bestseller, The Art of Project Management (O’Reilly). He teaches a graduate course in creative thinking at the University of Washington, runs the sacred places architecture tour at NYC’s GEL conference, and writes about innovation, design, and management at www.scottberkun.com.
The first Ignite Boston will be on Thursday, May 31, from 6 to 10pm at Tommy Doyle’s in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA. From 6-7pm, mingle and talk tech with your fellow FOOs, alpha geeks, and techies from the greater Boston area. Join a MAKE challenge team and participate in building bridges (how much weight can your bridge–made from less than 1K popsicle sticks–support?) After that, we’ll have a special keynote address from author Scott Berkun (The Myths of Innovation; The Art of Project Management) kicking off our Ignite night. Then, onto guest speakers who’ll catch you up on the cool, new, innovative stuff going on in technology today. Don’t blink or you’ll miss their lightning-fast, five-minute presentations. During intermissions, get a cold beer and chat with speakers, sponsors, and O’Reilly’s own editors. Join us Thursday, May 31, for a fun, energetic evening of talking, learning, making, collaborating (and drinking!). Check out the events and activities of our Ignite events on the West Coast.
RSVP
If you plan to attend, email IgniteBoston at oreilly dot com for the chance to win $300 worth of O’Reilly books of your choosing. You must be present to win.Presentation Guidelines
Ignite is a user-generated event. If you’re interested in speaking, then submit a proposal for consideration. Presentations must:- Be no longer than 5 minutes
- Be on an innovative topic (no sales pitches, please!)
- Be viewable on a PC [a MacBook Pro with Powerpoint and Keynote, and PDF] with standard AV equipment
