On Oct 15th I went to see my first “Ignite Phoenix” event, it is their 8th production here in the valley. The evening consists of 18 different people presenting their ideas in 5-minute presentations with 20 slides that automatically change every 30 seconds. It was quite entertaining and inspirational. The event is put on by the Phoenix Innovation Foundation, “a non-profit organization that provides educational and community building events in the Phoenix metropolitan area. A small team of volunteers plans and presents each Ignite Phoenix event.”
There were a wide range of presentations with titles from “Let’s Put Beer on the Dinner Table” to “In the quest for truth, I-ran into some problems: The real life of an Iranian-American” to “13: Too Old for Dolls, Too Young For Sex.” Some were more informative and inspirational and others were just entertaining.
Every one of the presenters was impressive for their courage to present their ideas in only 5-minutes to an 800-person audience. Except for the guy that read his entire presentation from his cell phone, that was just plain embarrassing.
Mixing It Up
From the Ignite Phoenix FAQ page: “Who should attend Ignite Phoenix?”
“Anyone who wants to hear new ideas should attend an Ignite Phoenix event. The presentations are informative and often quite humorous. It’s an opportunity to hear ideas and people from outside of your normal sphere of influence. By mixing it up, new and exciting things can happen.”
I love this and agree that by gathering different perspectives from people outside of your normal sphere of influence you are opening up your internalGPS to new ideas and innovation. I learned some new things and have all kinds of new ideas and it was fun too! You can see presentations from the prior #7 event (and eventually the #8 event too) via You-tube with this link.
How have you mixed it up lately? Please share in a comment.
photo credit: Rail Life (via Flickr creative commons)