The first Global Ignite Week was held this year from the 1st to 5th of March 2010 with great representation from across the UK including events in London, Bristol, Manchester and Cardiff. It was a truly international event, with Ignite evenings being held in six continents and 60 cities in locations as diverse as Cape Town, Casablanca, Anchorage and Bangalore.

Ignite Bristol took place on March 4th at the Polish Club in Clifton. It featured fourteen speakers who covered a wide variety of topics in a wide variety of presenting styles. The first Bristol event brought in 140 attendees who all thoroughly enjoyed themselves whilst being inspired!

According to Peter Blackman, one of the organizers, “Bristol is such a creative, independent minded city that it was no surprise that the response to the first Ignite was so positive. We sold out the venue a month in advance, and were deluged with submissions for talks on subjects as diverse as futurology, swing dancing, comic book culture, and microloans in the developing world.”

All the talks from Ignite Bristol #1 can be found on the website and the you tube channel www.youtube.com/ignitebristol some have even been selected to be featured prominently on the Global Ignite site.

Planning is now in hand for Ignite Bristol #2 which will take place in the summer. Submissions for talks can be made via the website http://ignitebristol.net

Ignite was started in Seattle in 2006 by Brady Forrest of O’Reilly Radar and Bre Pettis of Make magazine. Since then thousands of five minute talks have been given across the world. The idea is simple: presenters are required to stick to a rigid format of 20 slides, each of which changes automatically after 15 seconds, ensuring that presentations are exactly five minutes long. Topics range from tech and design to history and world events – the only rule is that talks cannot be about self-promotion, and that they adhere to the Ignite motto – ‘Enlighten us, but make it quick’

“We’ve been blown away by the response to Global Ignite Week,” said Ignite co-founder and O’Reilly Media Technical Evangelist Brady Forrest. “We were hoping for events in 40 cities, and ended up with commitments from volunteer organizers in 72 cities on every continent except Antarctica. And now that the space station has an Internet connection, we’re thinking about Ignite ISS.”