Author: John Wilker

Thank You!

John Wilker

Thank you everyone who joined us for our live review show last night! We raised $302 for the bug Theatre!

To prep for the evening John, Jared and Kat poured through the archives and picked a few sparks that had some significance to us. To be clear, we love them all equally, but love some a little more 🙂

We didn’t get to all of them but here’s the full list.

If you missed the fun, you can watch the recording below 🙂

Have you Ever Wondered…?

John Wilker

What Kat Atwell’s favorite ignite Spark is? Or John, who’s been running Ignite from day 1? Oh the stories he could tell…

We’ve been offline since after Ignite Denver 34, taking care of ourselves, our families and friends.

While in-person stuff is still a long way from being a reality, we wanted to bring the Ignite Denver family back together. We may look into an actual Ignite Denver online, but for now we wanted to do something else.

With 34 Ignite Denvers in the books… Or would it be Ignites Denver? Any how, with 34 in the books, we’ve got a wealth of awesome sparks and as you might expect, every member of the team has a favorite of two.

Join us October 21 for a fun review and chat. We’ll be online streaming, watching and talking about our favorite sparks from Ignites past. We’ll take questions, probably be drinking, and generally doing our best to be Ignite Denver in your home, on your TV, but not in a creepy way 🙂

We also want to support our friends at the Bug Theatre. They’ve been doing everything they can to keep the lights on, but as this pandemic drags on, it’s getting harder for them. As such any donation tickets sold will be forwarded on to the Bug, we’re not taking a cut, it all goes to the bug. We hope you’ll help us help them!

See you there?

Spark Submissions Close Today!

John Wilker

Are you sitting on a mind-blowing spark idea, waiting for the right time to submit it? Well that time is now!

Spark Submissions close tonight! Not tomorrow night, not this coming Monday night, TONIGHT!

Go submit your idea, be brave and bold (and beautiful, but that’s optional), maybe you’ll be on stage sharing your love for honeybees (an example, but who doesn’t love honeybees?) on stage at Ignite Denver 32.

Community, bravery and vulnerability all take stage at Ignite Denver!

John Wilker

Three out of four people have public speaking anxiety, and we’re sure that you already know it’s the #1 phobia, outranking fear of death. Yet, somehow, Ignite Denver has managed to draw in over 325 individuals to step onto our stage and share their unique perspectives on hundreds of topics.

Why is this?  

It could be the opportunity itself. Ignite Denver gives you a stage and an audience of roughly 300 people. You get five minutes to talk about whatever sparks your passion. You get to share your story, educate people, and bring to light issues that you believe deserve greater attention.

It could be our audience. We have one of the most supportive, engaged audiences around town. New people show up every time a new show is put on, and we have countless people who have been attending our shows for years. As a speaker, you really couldn’t ask for a better group of people to serve as your crowd of fans. By and large, our audience is respectful, fun, and smart. They like to be challenged and entertained. And they’re there for our speakers!

It could be the sense of community that magically evolves around each show. Our speakers develop fast friendships, and it’s amazing to see the bonding that happens every time we get a new line-up of participants. Each group is totally unique, but similarly, quick to support each other on levels that would surprise outsiders. Even if people disagree with the ideas being presented by other speakers, they’re respectful and open-minded, and willing to offer quality feedback. That’s one of the coolest universal truths about Ignite Denver – everyone wants to see everyone else in the group succeed beyond measure.

OR! It could be our fabulous committee of volunteers. If you don’t know John Wilker, Shawna Urbanski, Ethan Crawford, Maddison Hogan, Jared Ewy or Kat Atwell, you should take a second to reach out to them. It’s highly possible one of us is writing this RIGHT NOW. Not to brag, but we’re pretty great, and we are, hands down, the biggest advocates of our speakers. Our job is to make people feel supported, get excited, and trust that we’ll do everything we can to make their experience unforgettable.

If you haven’t been to Ignite Denver before, we invite you to join us on November 1st for Ignite Denver 30. You can see for yourself why we take so much pride in the show we’ve created, and the community that continues to build. And if you’ve been to our previous shows, we definitely look forward to seeing you again!

New Year, New Ignite Denver, New Sparks

John Wilker

Photo: Kia Ruiz
Naomi Kamla, addressing your inner sticky
Ignite Denver 15
Photo: Kia Ruiz

It’s a new year, Igniteers, and we’re excited to have another geektastic Ignite Denver on the horizon! That’s right; Thursday, February 20th at the Oriental, knowledge will be dropped. Did you make a resolution to try new things or to put yourself out there more? Perhaps you literally made a resolution to do more public speaking? If that’s the case, my friend, then I think you need to pitch a spark. We’re having an informational meeting this coming Monday, January 6th in Shift Workspaces at 6 pm so that you can find out more about the process and how to write a compelling pitch (we call them sparks because of the whole fire motif). In fact, here’s the whole freaking schedule for our workshoppes, those wonderful information sessions where we try to give you as much information as humanly possible to help you create the best Ignite presentation ever. Jan. 6 – Creating a Compelling Pitch/Spark Jan. 20 – Presenting at Ignite Feb. 3 – Creating a Great Presentation Feb. 10 – 1st Run Through **REQUIRED** Feb. 17 – 2nd Run Through **REQUIRED** These are all on Mondays at 6 pm at Shift Workspaces, so you don’t have to try and juggle different days of the week in your mind. Because we care. If you’re at all interested in finding out what it takes to submit a spark and become a presenter, we encourage you to swing by on Monday and see what all this noise is about. Happy New Year and all that jazz, Your Ignite Denver Organizers

Ignite Denver 10 – Pizza and Chinese food!!

John Wilker

If Ignite Denver 10 isn’t your first rodeo you’ll know we love Fat Sully’s Pizza! TO make eating and drinking easier we’ve invited one more food truck to the party. Bambu Mobile Chinese!

Make sure you get to the Sherman St Event Center in time to grab a beer or two and some grub before the presentations start!

See you Wednesday!

Doors open at 6:00 and sparks start around 7:00

Get your ticket soon! They’re going fast!

 

Ignite Denver – Now with more beer!

John Wilker

Haven’t bought a ticket to Ignite Denver yet? You should. Already bought the $10 2 beer ticket, you’re in luck.

Through the magic of awesome sponsors we’re making the 2 beer ticket a “beer Wristband” ticket which means your $10 now gets you a lot more awesome craft beer!

Like I said, if you haven’t bought a ticket, they’re going fast and you should jump on it. We’ve got an awesome line up of presenters, and awesome line up of craft beer sponsors, and of course the regular Ignite Denver awesomeness that you’ve come to know and love!

You can read a bit more on the Denver Off the Wagon Blog.

Don’t miss out!

 

Ignite Denver 10 – The presenters!

John Wilker

Hold on to your hats! Here’s the list of the awesome sparks you’re gonna see in just over a week!

This isn’t the order they’ll be presenting in – we’ll announce that later – but here’s your full Ignite Denver 10 Line up!!

See you there!

  • Jonathan Shikes – Big Beers, Barleywines and Being Blitzed
  • Greg Koch – CEO, Stone Brewing – Environmental Righteousness!
  • D.T. Pennington – A Really Great Idea at the Time
  • Dave Thibodeau – President, Ska Brewing – Beer, Career, and Fate in 5
  • Chris Washenberger – Distillation And Why I Love It
  • Chris Rippe – Hey Prohibition, Suck It
  • Rick Lyke – Founder, Pints for Prostates – Pints for Prostates
  • Tim Davids – How I Lost a Bunch of Weight (and Also the Ability to Do Anything Fun, Ever)
  • Thomas Kolicko – Director, Beer Culture
  • Sara Downey – Beer Makes Me a Better Mommy. Wait. Who’s THAT Baby?
  • Ashley Routson – a.k.a. The Beer Wench
  • Nick Nunns – BEER & METAL
  • Jace Milstead – Someone Give Me a Show About Beer
  • Josh Mishell – Good Beer and Good Marketing are Not Mutually Exclusive!
  • Amanda Johnson – Marketing and Branding Manager, Odell Brewing – Beer Play

If you’re not excited… well go read that line up again!!

Then go buy your ticket! Remember, the $10 ticket includes 2 (TWO!!) craft beers, the $5 ticket includes NONE. Of course, you can buy beer tickets onsite too!

Ignite Denver 10 – VOTE

John Wilker

The submissions for Ignite Denver 10 are incredible. But don’t take my word on it. Go over to the voting site and get your vote on!

These are only a portion of the overall submissions. We’ve got an awesome line up of GABF presenters as well as the great Denver crowd you’re voting on. It’s gonna be an awesome night. Hope you bought your ticket. They’re going fast!

Ignite Denver 10 – BEER

John Wilker

You’ve seen the tweets, you’ve heard the hype…

It’s all true.

Ignite Denver 10, GABF is gonna be off the hook. Yes I said, it was cool back then it’s cool now!

We’ve got some really awesome submissions from both Denverites who want to share their knowledge and passion with us, and folks from the Brewers Association (the list is here). This will be a great Ignite Denver.

To celebrate GABF and all it means to Denver and us the beer drinking masses, Ignite Denver is moving downtown. We’ll be at the Sherman St. Event Center! An awesome space right downtown, not far from the capital and 16th St mall shuttle.

Tickets go on sale Friday at noon. There’s 300 tickets and if you think waiting until the week before Ignite is a good idea, you’ll be very sad. Get yours now!

It wouldn’t be a GABF Ignite Denver if we didn’t have craft beer on hand. We’ve got beer from Ska Brewing, Great Divide Brewery and Renegade Brewing, plus maybe 1 or 2 more we’ll reveal later. Beer tickets will be on sale onsite for $5 so you can enjoy these awesome local brews. You can also buy a $10 ticket that includes 2 tickets. (Do the math. Ignite Denver is $5. The other $5 gets you two beers, which will be $5 each onsite. Two beers for the price of one. Booya!)

See you in September!

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