Another Great Ignite in Montreal

We had our second Ignite event in Montreal this past Tuesday ( Feb 8 ) as part of the Ignite Global Week. Once again, it was huge success and it shows all of the good talent and exciting stuff happening in Montreal. Everyone I talked to really enjoyed themselves and had a great time talking and meeting fellow entrepreneurs/like-minded people.

I guess I speak for all of the people involved in helping making it happen, that we really enjoyed putting it together and hearing about that people had a good time. We have actually decided to have an Ignite a bit more often: twice a year. So, we should have another one some time in August (follow us on Twitter or subscribe to this feed for more details in a couple of months)

We want to thank our amazing speakers who worked very hard to enlighten and entertain us for 5min: Aimee Davison, Alex Enkerli, Amanda Strong, André Nantel, Andy Nulman, Anila Patel, Brian Rotsztein, Chris ‘Zeke’ Hand, Christine Renaud, Elisabeth Bucci, Jackson Wightman, Jonathan Ginter, Kyle MacDonald, and Santiago Paiva.

Also, we’d like to thank our sponsors for supporting this kind of events and the community in general: BDO, Capital Innovation, Kovasys, KPMG, and TandemLaunch Technologies.

Last but not least, we’d like to thank our MC, Aleece Germano, our photographer Eva Blue, and Nic Siggel for recording the talks so that people who weren’t able to attend can see what they missed

Stay tuned in the next week or so and we’ll post all of the photos and the videos from each talk in here.

Thank you all for being a part of it. See you at the next one!

Ignite Montreal is tonight!

We’re all very excited about the Second Ignite Montreal tonight, Tue – Feb 8th.

Times

The presentations will start at 7pm, but feel free to arrive anytime between 6-7. Tickets are $10 at the door if you haven’t already bought them online.

The Ignite Talks

We will have 14 5min talks divided into 3 blocks with a short 10min break in between. Click here for the list of speakers.

Location

Il Motore is located on 179 Rue Jean-Talon Ouest (between Park Ave and St-Laurent boul.) The venue can be a little hard to find, so be sure to familiarize yourself with our directions page. The nearest metro is De Castelnau (Blue line) and the nearest buses are the 55 and the 92.

Topics selected for Ignite Montreal 2011!

We’d like to thank everyone who took their time to submit their topic to present @ Ignite Montreal.

We’ve received 22 topics and had the hard task to pick 14 out of them. Unfortunately a lot of interesting ones couldn’t make it this time.

We have also confirmed the date/time and location to:

Tuesday, Feb 8th @ 7pm at Il Motore | Get your tickets here.

Without further ado, here are the presenters and topics for the next Ignite Montreal (in alphabetical order)

You-commerce: The Power of Internet Projects

Aimee Davison – @Onehundredjobs Aimee Davison is a web producer, social media strategist, writer, speaker, model and actor from Montreal, Quebec.

The Serious Business of Playfulness

Alex Enkerli – @enkerli Informal ethnographer with a formal background in ethnographic disciplines. Social scientist, teacher, sax player, homeroaster.

Eating for the Earth: Insipirational Grass-Root Food Initiatives

Amanda Strong – @mindfultable Amanda Strong is a freelance writer and the owner of The Mindful Table, a blog dedicated to exploring local and sustainable food and dining choices in Canada with a focus on Montreal and south-western Quebec. She has been writing about food, health and the environment for over a decade.

A Caveman, his iPhone and the Rise of Systems Biology

André Nantel – @nantel A biologist with the NRC and McGill University, Dr. André Nantel does research on the fungal pathogen Candida albicans, cancer and heart disease, a job that often makes him feel like a caveman trying to reverse-engineer an iPhone. He is also known for publishing beautiful pictures on the internet.

Andy will improvise the story of his life from 20 photos that he’s never seen before! Not sure what to expect? Neither is he!

Andy Nulman – @andynulman An acclaimed and thought-provoking public speaker/showman, motivating and challenging Fortune 500 companies the likes of GM, Eveready/Energizer, 3M and Wal-Mart, Mr. Nulman has also written two best-selling books, “How To Do The Impossible” and “I Almost Killed George Burns.” Mr. Nulman is the President of Just For Laughs festivals and television.

How to become a millionaire

Anila Patel - @smileyanila During the day I am a Java software developer, in the evening I enjoy reading about motivating myself to success.

The Internet by the Numbers

Brian Rotsztein – @brianrotsztein Brian Rotsztein is CEO of Uniseo, a full service web design, search engine optimization, social media and Internet marketing company.

Montreal Hamburgers; why they are art and how they dance

Chris ‘Zeke’ Hand – @MontrealBurgers Chris ‘Zeke’ Hand used to run Zeke’s Gallery. Now he podcasts about Dance, Art and Hamburgers in Montreal. Not all at the same time.

Why do we still need face-to-face when we can be screen-to-screen?

Christine Renaud – @e180 Christine is a social entrepreneur utilizing interactive tools to foster self-directed human potential development and artistic initiatives. She’s the CEO and founder of E-180, producer of matchmaking web/mobile apps and events aiming to connect people interested in sharing knowledge offline.

A Thing for Pyramids

Elisabeth Bucci @ElisabethBucci Passionate about project management, business processes, tools, scrapbooking, cooking, TV, writing and teaching.

Why buy local?

Jackson Wightman – @Jaxx09 Jackson Wightman is Communications Director for CauseForce. In this capacity he is responsible for external and internal communications as well as fun things like guerrilla marketing.

Are we out of time?

Jonathan Ginter - @lions2912 Jonathan is a musician, singer, actor and 20-year veteran of the IT industry. Oddly enough, these areas have proven to be complementary somehow. Jonathan also has strong interests in history, science and archaeology and avidly follows developments in these fields in his spare time.

How to trade a red paperclip for a house

Kyle MacDonald – @oneredpaperclip Originally from Belcarra, British Columbia, Canada, Kyle MacDonald has planted more than one hundred thousand trees, delivered more than one thousand pizzas, but eaten only one scorpion. He has also traded one red paperclip for a house only once.

Prepare to solve (real) problems

Santiago Paiva – @Stronnics Santiago Paiva is currently a CEGEP student at Vanier College and Chairman of IET Montreal Young Professionals. He is a holistic learning, productivity hacking CEGEP student who wants to build things that inspire and drive change.

Montreal Confirmed for Global Ignite Week 2011

We’ve met today to finalize the plans for the next Ignite Montreal. It will be on Feb 8, 2011 probably at the same venue as last year: La Salla Rosa (still to be confirmed.)

If you haven’t been to an Ignite event yet, it’s a lot of fun. We’re going to have 15 quick presentations (5min), each speaker has 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds. You can see all of the talks from last year here.

We’ll be posting the link to get tickets soon, so be sure to subscribe to this feed or follow our Twitter account, so you’re in the loop.

Would you like to speak at Ignite Montreal?

Submit your topic by Jan 14 (next Friday) here.

We would also like to ask you to help us promote the event. Please tweet about it (use #ignitemtl) or share it with your friends/colleagues who might be interested in participating.

Ignite Montreal coming back in 2011!

Just wanted to keep you all updated on our attempt to host another Ignite in Montreal in 2011 and hopefully make it a more regular event.  Some people who have shown interest in getting involved and I (Felipe) are meeting today Dec 22 to move forward with it. I’ll keep you all posted about the details early in January.

Thanks to all who emailed me interested in helping out.

Ignite Montreal needs an organising team for Ignite Week 2011

Hi all,

We had a great Ignite in Montreal during Ignite Week 2010. It was definitely an awesome event for our community and we saw a lot of really good presentations. Unfortunately we all got very busy with other stuff and are unable to organize it for 2011, but we would love to see Montreal still being a part of it.

So, I’d like to call out to others who might be willing to make it happen during Global Ignite Week 2011 and maybe make it a more regular event in Montreal.

If you think you can get involved, please send me a note: felipe@63squares.com

Schedule

Here is the schedule for tomorrow’s event:

 7.00pm Doors open, bar open all night.
 7.30pm Introduction by Aleece Germano
 8.00pm Session One (5 speakers)
 8.30pm Break (10 minutes)
 8.40pm Session Two (5 speakers)
 9.10pm Break (10 minutes)
 9.20pm Session Three (4 speakers)
 9.45pm Closing words by Aleece Germano
10.00pm Bar & DJs until midnight

Also, we are pleased to announce that Ignite Montréal is set to make a profit – so we have decided to donate all profit from the event to charity. All the money we make will go to help the aid work being carried out in Haiti by Medecins San Frontières (Doctors without Borders) and the Red Cross.

Tell your colleagues, bring your friends, and help us raise even more money for Haiti!

Ignite Montreal Speakers!

We received nearly 30 topics for the first Ignite Montreal and here are the selected speakers. You can follow them all at @ignitemtl/ignite-1-speakers

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Adele McAlear - bio / twitter Death and Digital Legacy. Adele McAlear is a marketing consultant specializing in social media and has been building communities online since 1999. With mainstream adoption of social media, people are living more and more of their lives on the web. Adele is exploring the ripples that death causes in web communities, and the roles that  privacy, law, software development and technology play at our most critical human moments.

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Alistair Croll - bio / twitter TL;DR. Alistair works on too many things, including web monitoring, cloud computing, augmented reality, startups, music, and producing events. He’s too busy to keep track of all of those.

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Andrew Culver - bio / twitter Chance. Take one. I’ll show how to go operational with it. Andrew is a composer and the founder and CEO of iLiv. He first programmed I Ching chance operations on a PDP-11 at MIT in 1982, but he’d been using them analog for a while before that.

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Annie Dussault Comment construire un Quin-zhee! Annie Dussault works for the McGill University Health Center in the telehealth department. She is also a scout which is how she was introduced to winter camping about 10 years ago.

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Chris Arsenault - bio / twitter Entrepreneurial Capital An entrepreneur turned venture capitalist, and looking for the next best entrepreneur to back!

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Georges Duverger - web / twitter Le poids de l’air Having survived years of engineering school, Georges has witnessed the public and the private in human-computer interaction labs and inspiring start-ups. In a quest for fresh air, he left the old continent to craft Web applications into new territories.

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Jeff Scott –  twitter Digital grammar Jeff Scott, a consultant at NATIONAL Public Relations, focuses on technology and social media. His love of language, inherent geekiness and passion for writing drove him to make this presentation in the hopes of encouraging you to reconsider hitting the “Send” button.

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Jonathan Ginter – twitter “Life is a river” – how to pay attention to the proper flow of your life. Jonathan Ginter has a profound interest in history, science and whether this present moment is more real than the next universe over.  He currently works in IT as a product manager and spends fair amounts of his spare time traveling with his wife.

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Jonathan Karpfen - bio / twitter Where have all the users gone?  Putting the ‘Who’ and the ‘How’ back into the ‘What.’ Jonathan Karpfen is a market researcher and user experience designer.  A former member of the creative team at Airborne Mobile here in Montreal, he most recently was a manager at Ipsos Reid in Ottawa.  Jonathan spends his days dreaming of returning to live and work in La Belle Ville.  His presentation is inspired by failure.

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Max Finder – twitter What I’m learning in University Max Finder is pursuing a degree in Mechanical Engineering. He collects VHS video tapes, enjoys salsa dancing and playing monopoly.

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Michael Boyle – twitter Counting is not analysis; Plus, how I learned to love the long tail Michael Boyle is a partner at Nexalogy Environics and a long-time member of the Montreal web building and social media communities. An early blogger (mikel.org), Michael has worked as a consultant, e-business manager, online marketing lecturer (McGill), project and product manager, and started as the assistant editor of one of the first academic journals to go 100% electronic in 1994.

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Sebastien Paquet - bio / twitter How to Become a Culture Hacker Sébastien Paquet has spent the past decade playing with the idea that technology can be a catalyst for changing culture. He loves connecting the dots. He is never bored.

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Syl Aucoin – blog / twitter An Ex-Hobo’s Basic Street Survival Guide. Having spent over a year on the streets of Montreal as a teenager, and now living a “normal” successful life (including a Plateau apartment, an awesome job in Telehealth and even a pet), Syl offers an interesting insight on what to do (how not to die) if you end up on the streets.

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John Brohan – blog / bio Anonymous Medicine John Brohan works in the intersection of health, computers and cellphones, and is fascinated by the fact that MD5 hashing can be used to store medical data anonymously.

Last day to submit topics: TODAY! (Wed, Feb 17)

We extended the deadline to submit topics until today (Feb 17). So if you’d like to speak at the first Ignite Montreal:

• Learn about Ignite presentations and think about what you could present.
• Send us an email ASAP with the information in here.

If you’d like to sponsor, go here for more information.

Don’t forget to buy your tickets soon. Proceeds will go to a charity organization.

PS: Even though most of the information about this event is in English, the presentations can be in either French or English.

Welcome to Ignite Montreal

We’re excited to announce that we’ll be hosting the first Ignite in Montreal on March 2nd, during the Global Ignite Week. We’re still getting everything organised and we’ll be sending out more details in the coming days. So, in the meanwhile:

• Follow @IgniteMTL on Twitter
• Join our Facebook group
• Subscribe to this feed
• Save this date: March 2nd, 2010

We invite you to learn more about Ignite, consider speaking or sponsoring it.