Huddled underground, in an old Victorian public toilet, a group of geeks gathered last night to be part of the first technological happening of its kind in the UK’s capital: Ignite London debuted in Shepherd’s Bush’ s Ginglik Bar (a public toilet in a previous life).
It wasn’t just the free beer (courtesy of Box UK) that enticed geeks away from their computer-action-stations; Ignite London attracted a reputable line-up of speakers – and audience members alike (with rumours of a BBC Three talent scout lurking). WIRED UK’s Editor-at-Large, Ben Hammersley kicked off the evening with a 5-minute talk on Renaissance sex masters: The Sex Lives of the Great Renaissance Masters: How the Old Masters and Their Mistresses Changed Art (after admitting, no, he didn’t know what editor-at-large meant either). Things were getting off to a good start.
Ignite started in Seattle in 2006 by Brady Forrest of O’Reilly Radar and Bre Pettis of Make. Since then hundreds of five minute talks have been given across the world. Besides Seattle, Ignite communities thrive all over the world – in Portland, Sydney and NYC to name a few. The idea is simple: presenters are required to stick to a strict format of 20 slides, each of which changes automatically after 15 seconds, making each presentation is exactly 5 minutes long.
But why is watching five-minute presentations so popular? As our host, Andy, said, we are bombarded by information on a daily basis. So much is vying to engage our short attention span, therefore, form is important.
An event Twitter feed was projected onto the venue wall, recording thoughts about the night in real-time. Audience members were actively encouraged to tweet throughout (even if it was anti-social to your neighbouring audience members); the person who tweeted the most even got a prize: umm, well done (?) @smannion.
Throughout the event, there were history lessons about the year 1794, political commentaries on Italy’s lack of democracy and Brazil’s climate change responsibilities, a military monstrosity in Operation Paul Bunyan by Alby Reid – as well as a celebration of design ideas, a controversial exploration of the relationship between austism and creativity – and even a little Sideways Thinking.
Oxford University PhD student, Matt Baker, got the crowd holding their stomachs and laughing – out of amusement and digust – at his talk, Diarrhea & Dodgy Doners: What’s Special About Bacteria (My Dirty Doner), performed with a brilliant rap-poem. Expertly delivered. Much audience appreciation (especially so by @EmVicW who confessed, “Am a little bit in love with matt baker after his #igniteldn turn. Despite knowing too much about his bowels.”) The BBC’s Research and Development bod, Nicky Smyth, gave an interesting talk on Analogue World Design Patterns: A Look at User Behaviour too.
All in all, the evening’s talks were of a more philosophical nature than previous Ignite events I’ve been to elsewhere (with talks on how to make paper aeroplanes and surviving zombie attacks in Cardiff). The Guardian’s Chris Thorpe gave a thought-provoking talk about learning to “be” in a networked world; director of nowhere and co-founder and managing director of beyondnowhere UK, Matt Clarke asked us to, “Practice blending passions with talents” in his talk about Human Energy (also concluding by wishing us all “fantastic lives”) and J.K Tina Basi gave a whirlword guide to surfing the net as the path to enlightenment (using words like ‘koan’ and phases like ‘arrest the thinking mind’). Heavy.
Clearly, London geeks are thoughtful, soul-searching, sensitive types who use technology as a way to reach out in a quest to understand the world around us. But then again may not – a tweet from last night: @FridayHere Chips, chips, chips in the loo. Chips in the loo in London. #igniteLDN #Ginglik
Wired UK's editor-at-large, Ben Hammersley, snapped munching crisps before his opening talk.
The event was organised by Amy Thibodeau and Dan Zambonini who also write for The Januarist.
Ms. Williams should learn a little history before denigrating Operation Paul Bunyan. It may have been just a tree to her, but to North Korea it was a toll to goad the U.S. into attacking it and reigniting the Korean War. Only our restraint kept that from happening. How many countries would show the same sense if memers of their military were hacked to death as the two JSA officers were.
I spent a year in the JSA, arriving 18 months after the operation. The tensions were still high and remain so today.
Being a geek is no excuse for ignorance.
Many thanks for your comment. Please be assured that denigration was not my intention. As part of my report on the Ignite London event, I referenced a five-minute talk given by Alby Reid, titled ‘Operation Paul Bunyan’, which used the poplar tree located in the Joint Security Area to launch an exploration of the incident.
Clearly, there is always more to learn and be aware of – something that Ignite events aim to target. However, as the talks are only five minutes long, perhaps some crucial information was excluded.
Given your direct experience, it would be great if you could use the comment space to fill in any information you feel was overlooked in Alby’s talk so myself and Witch Tech fellow readers can move forward, more informed about ‘Operation Paul Bunyan’ and its significance.
Please let me know what your thoughts are.
Hi Jenny,
I am a former member of the JSA as well. I was there during the timeframes depicted.
A 5 minute talk is vastly too short to even begin to explain the JSA, it’s history, etc. in sufficient detail to inform others exactly what it is like.
About two months before I arrived there, the North Koreans attacked an unurmed American Major (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Henderson_Incident) resulting in serious injuries.
While I was there, which was still a neutral area at the time, allowing both sides full access to each side inside the JSA, we felt fairly safe as long the North Koreans (KPA) never outnumbered us by more than 3:1. Once that critical level happened, then we would get real tense as we knew something was probably going to happen. We couldn’t really counter it either, as unlike the KPA, we adhered to the armistice agreement and kept our numbers inside the JSA limited to 30 armed enlisted men and 5 armed officers.
Anyway, much more information is available on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Security_Area and the resulting links embedded in the page). As far as Operation Paul Bunyan itself goes, the reason there was so much military ’stuff’, was to send a message to the KPA. The area was literally a tinderbox, ready to explode. Capt. Bonifas only had less than a week left in country before going home. Lt. Barrett had been in country less than weeks, and had recently gotten married before going overseas.
In the Korean mindset at the time, if you’re bigger, you’re better. This partially explains all of the things like flag sizes, the sizes of the buildings there at the JSA, etc. It also was one of the criteria for any US soldier who volunteered to work there. We all had to be over 6 feet tall as the KPA still haven’t been that successful in creating a tall soldier. So, with the extreme show of force, we not only sent a clear message that we had more (and were therefore bigger) military hardware ready to pound them, but that we took the axe-murder incident very seriously.
Since those were two of our own officers, murdered in cold blood in a supposedly neutral area, for most of us in the JSA, we felt our response was insufficient, but having worked there and knowing the attitudes and philosophy, we accepted it.
A smaller military presence probably would led to gunfire, and therefore hostilities definately would have broken out.
Anyway, thanks for your time. I hope this and the wikipedia articles help explain some of the history and intricacy. Please forgive any typos, but this box has been scrolling for quite a while now, and it makes it more difficult to see what I’ve written. BTW, I contributed heavily to the wikipedia articles, to help polish them up and/or get them started.
(my first attempt to save this appeared to have hung, so here it goes again)
The 1976 Operation Paul Bunyan on the DMZ between the two Koreas was hardly a “military monstrosity,” as characterized by Jenny Williams. It was the measured response of a civilized country – the USA, to the barbaric axe murders of two American soldiers and wounding of eight other South Korean and American soldiers by a force of over 50 North Korean Communist soldiers led by the infamous North Korean Lieutenant “Bulldog” Pak Chul. What were the American and South Korean soldiers doing at the time of this attack? They were simply pruning a tree that was blocking the line of sight between an observation post and a checkpoint on the Bridge of No Return at the truce village of Panmunjom. Ms Williams, why did the North Korean soldiers not use a peaceful protest or engage in a non-violent dialog to respond to this tree pruning event? The only “military monstrosity” in this event was the actions of those murdering North Korean soldiers.
James Mazour, JSA soldier 1973-74
I was not upset with the talk. It was your “military monstrosity” remark that offended me. I think Jim Mazour explained how we feel quite well.
To defend my choice of words, I refer solely to the sheer scale of the operation and unnecessary death of soldiers as monstrous. This is not an attack or judgement against the actions of the USA. I really appreciate you all taking the time to comment and make clear the importance of the issue. I can assure you that I am greatly more informed now about the Operation than I was previously.
Kind regards,
Jenny