Ignite Denver 14 Archives

Oh What a Night!

June 14, 2013 Guest Writer

We’ve stowed away our costumes for October, packed up the VGA cables for September and properly hydrated after an Ignite Denver to remember.

Wowee, was last night a great time and we’re so glad for all the people who came out and experienced it first hand, as well as the folks who watched our live stream (which, btw, had 100 watching at one point, a new Ignite Denver record, thanks to flawless execution by Ethan and his team at Rocky Media). You dressed up, you joked around in the photo booths and laughed and were inspired by our splendid speakers.

We would like to thank all of our sponsors, and in particular the food sponsors that donated goodies so that we could give you a little trick or treat bag as you left The Oriental for the evening. Here are the sponsors for the goodies included in your bag:

Congrats on our costume contest winners: Erika Napoletano (as a Bad Habit) and Amy Little (as a Sexual Predator)! They’ve got a pretty awesome prize coming to them from Enjoy Wishlist. Plus our speed round contestants that won credit to name.com!

The photo booth photos from Chipper Booth are up on their Facbook page for you to tag as well as hi res versions (that you can download for free) available on their website. Thanks also to Kia Ruiz for taking photos of the speakers and audience throughout the night and we’ll have those up on Facebook page in the next few days.

We hope you had as much fun as we did putting Ignite Denver 14 together and we hope to see you at Ignite Denver 15 for Denver Startup Week!

Some More Words About Our Sponsors: Chipper Booth

June 5, 2013 Guest Writer

So, for those of you who don’t know me, here’s a fun fact:

It’s physically impossible for me to resist a photobooth. They have some sort of bizarre gravitational pull on me and by the night’s end, I’ve dragged as many people as I possibly can into the booth and made numerous weird faces. Suffice it to say, my ass has been in quite a few photobooths over the past few years.

However, despite my booth promiscuity, I have found myself returning to the same company over and over for numerous reasons. Chipper Booth is my go to company any time someone asks me for recommendations about hiring a photobooth company.

Naturally, I’m over the moon that the awesome folks at Chipper Booth are Ignite Denver 14 sponsors and will be present at June-O-Ween to capture all of the awesome costumes (even if you come in your civies, they’ll have some cool props for you to use) and shenanigans of the evening! If you need some inspiration, these costumes should help.

What makes these guys such a great fit with the Ignite Denver community? Well, for one, they are all about community and keeping it local. Most of each photobooth is made from materials obtained locally. The glass is purchased in Edgewater, hardware in Berkeley, the wood is from Globeville, steel from the Highlands and the curtains are made in Loveland. The only thing non-Colorado is the aluminum frame, which comes from 500 miles away in Utah but only because they haven’t found the appropriate aluminum type in Colorado (yet). These booths are as homegrown as you can get.

One of the other reasons that Chipper Booth is ahead of the game is the way that they’ve set up their booth. Instead of focusing on megapixels or webcams, they focused on what actually makes a good photo, which is lighting and optics. Because of this, every photo is always lit perfectly and even your derpiest face somehow looks better than it ever did before.

Also, the strips print out in seconds. I’m not kidding you. I don’t know what kind of witchcraft they use, but you wait for your photos for 30 seconds max, meaning there isn’t a weird huddle of people outside the booth waiting for their photos. I like to imagine a pocket sized Gandalf waving his staff and printing the photos, even though that’s probably not what’s happening.

They’ve grown rapidly over the last 18 months and for good reason. They’re heavily involved in the Denver community and work frequently with fundraisers and other local events (as well as weddings and stuff). Oh, and they’re professional, timely and super nice.

We know you’ll love the photos you get from June-O-Ween and we encourage you to choose Chipper Booth the next time you’re in the market for a photobooth.

And Now, A Word from Our Sponsor: Shift Workspaces

May 29, 2013 Guest Writer

Being on the Ignite Board of Organizers is hard work. We have to plan a fun and educational evening and we typically have to do it while drinking beer and making varying degrees of jokes that one might hear in between classes in a high school hallway. We’re all super mature.

One of the newest additions to our planning meetings and super awesome workshoppe series (which were also new this time around) was our physical meeting space. We switched this time around to meeting at Shift Workspaces on 4^th and Corona and we have loved every minute of the switch.

They’ve been exceedingly flexible to our needs, whether we needed a room for our standard meetings or something a little larger for our workshoppes, they were able to adjust. Which is one of the things that Shift really prides themselves on: the ability to “shift” (sorry, I couldn’t help it) to meet their members’ needs. Whether you just need a desk in their common area or something a little more private, they can accommodate.

They also focus heavily on a good work/life balance. They have residences in their building as well as a work space and members have access to an on-site gym, wellness center and yoga classes. They also try to balance the member events with both business and fun so that people can get a well-rounded experience.

One of my personal favorite aspects of Shift is the way that they’ve designed the space. When you walk in, you know you’re in a professional space, but it’s also a really inviting space. There’s nothing stark about it.

If that isn’t enough to entice you to go in and give Shift Workspaces a try, then take into consideration that they are a sponsor for a great community-based event and organization. They have been completely supportive of our goals and even let us come in after normal hours and hold meetings.

Despite the fact that we’re loud laughers and dirty joke makers. They should get a medal for putting up with us on a nearly weekly basis.

Presenting Your Ignite Denver 14 Speakers!

May 27, 2013 Guest Writer

Ladies and Gents, you came, you saw, you voted and you rocked it! We are very pleased to announce the 14 Ignite Denver presenters for June 13^th, our June-O-Ween flavored Ignite Denver. I’m not even going to write anymore flowery language. Here are our kickass speakers:

Beth Mosenthal: REDEFINING THE TOWN SQUARE
Tim Dixon: Your Final Word
Traci Brown: How to talk your way out of a traffic ticket
Maureen McNamara: Laugh or Get Throat Punched
Andrew Schaefer & Jack Fitzpatrick: Shut it off and pay attention to the world around you!
Tamara Kleinberg: Entrepreneur Training 101
Audrey Klanecky: The Happiness Equation
Erika Napoletano: You Don’t Know Jacques: The Recondite Lives of Renowned People
Kevin White: Volunteering with Purpose
Mark Scheel: Meaningful Work
David McMurtry: The Ancient Lost Art of Saying Hi!
Nicole Relyea: Why You Should Stop Working for the Man

We’re so proud of you guys and we can’t wait for you to bring your “A” game to Ignite Denver 14 (in your best June-O-Ween costume, of course)!

And Now, a Word from Our Sponsor: ORBTR

May 15, 2013 Guest Writer

Straight from the Ignite Denver community, ORBTR is the brainchild of Erik Wolf, who brought us the timeless presentation a few Ignites ago called “Is My Web Guy F#cking Me?” He’s come up with a marketing automation suite that makes sure you don’t get f#cked.

It’s designed specifically to integrate with WordPress sites and does so with ease. ORBTR installs just like any other plugin and it’s easy to use since it’s WordPress based, so the organization and workflows are very familiar and the learning curve is minimal.

ORBTR is like a crystal ball for salespeople. It shows you exactly HOW your best prospects use your site by tracking their every page view and notifies you in real time via email when a hot prospect returns you your site. This helps you improve your follow-ups, close more deals and build intelligence that can be used to refine page content.

But wait, there’s more! ORBTR integrates with SalesForce, Highrise, Zoho, MailChimp, Gravity Forms and more within WordPress so you don’t have to go from one account to another. Easily handle business as you normally do, but in WordPress instead of another account and, voila! You’ve just covered all your bases, Holmes.

We’ve been using ORBTR for the last couple of months and we can dig it. You should check it out too. I mean, they offer a 14 day free trial and then after that, the rates are super affordable.

What have you got to lose? That’s right, nothing. Support an amazing local business run by one of our very own in the Ignite community.

Announcing the First Ever June-O-Ween at Ignite Denver 14!

May 7, 2013 Guest Writer

I won’t lie. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I love coming up with costume ideas (I plan them for months, actually), I love seeing other people’s costumes and I love candy corn, the official disgusting candy of Halloween.

The one thing I HATE about Halloween in Colorado is that it always manages to take place during the first cold snap of the year. So all these great costumes are covered by bulky North Face parkas or ladies in skimpy costumes look miserable rather than jovial as they freeze their little butts off in the cold.

Well, NOT ANYMORE! We here at Ignite Denver are changing the rules and we’re having Halloween in June (or June-O-Ween, if you will)!

June-O-Ween Ignite Denver — Someone please, pretty please, wear this costume.

That’s right; Ignite Denver 14 is going to be Halloween themed. Come decked out in your favorite costume and don’t worry about having to cover it up with bulky flesh-toned tights or a turtleneck underneath. Wear that costume the way it was meant to be worn: in dead sexy fashion.

Gorillas, ghouls, school girls or Tarzan. We want to see you in an outfit you’ve never worn to Ignite Denver before! We’ll be giving away prizes for best speaker costume, best audience costume and best group costume and local awesome photo booth company, Chipper Booth, will be there to capture your most ridiculous poses and memorial moments.

We have to give credit to the Denwhere? crew for helping to make Ignite Denver a June-O-Ween dream. If you haven’t heard of them, Denwhere? is an organization that recently formed in order to facilitate community, entrepreneurship, and education in Denver and Ignite Denver is their flagship event.

We’ve got a couple other surprises up our sleeves for June-O-Ween and Ignite Denver 14, so stay tuned for more awesome announcements.

Ignite Denver 14 Spark Submissions: Now with Extra Minty Flavor

April 24, 2013 Guest Writer

Hopefully by now you’ve heard that spark submissions are open and you’ve already started thinking about the topic that you want to present to an audience of 400 (think of all the lives you’ll change). We encourage anyone and everyone to throw their name in the hat for presentation consideration but there are a few guidelines to consider before you commit mind, body and soul to Ignite Denver 14.

Be available June 13^th. Yeah, it’s a no brainer, but please make sure that your schedule is open on the night of Ignite.
Attend one of two (or both, because the more run throughs you have, the better your presentation will be) mandatory run throughs on 5/27 and 6/10. If you don’t attend one of these, you will be removed from the lineup. Seriously. </hardass>
Be ready to rock some minds.

PLUS, this time around we’ve added Ignite Workshoppes (yes, they’re super artisan, hence the “e” at the end)! In order to help our community be better Igniteers, we’re developing a series of get togethers/round tables to help you or that “friend of yours” feel more comfortable with the Ignite process. None of it is mandatory, but our goal is to help you end up with a finished product that kicks more ass than an angry donkey in a pen with a lot of other donkeys or some other metaphor much better than that one.

Take a look at the schedule and see if any of them look interesting to you:

Creating the Perfect Pitch (April 29^th): Learn what to do and what not to do when developing an idea for a spark and turning it into a pitch. What types of topics do well? What’s old hat?

Organizing Your Thoughts into a Presentation (May 6^th): Tips for taking your idea and putting it into slide form. The best way to craft the “flow” of a presentation so that the information is actually accessible, meaningful and memorable.

Presenting to a Crowd (May 20^th): A workshop focused on honing public speaking skills. Talk about common roadblocks and mishaps that occur during public speaking and offer solutions on overcoming the challenges.

First Run Through (May 27^th): Go through first round of Ignite presentations. It’s mandatory that presenters attend this meeting or the following run through (June 10) in order to be able to present on the 14^th.

Second Run Through (June 10): Same as above, but there is an opportunity for an additional run through for those that attended the first run through.

Even if you aren’t presenting on June 14^th, we still welcome you to join in on any of these workshoppes. The topics we want to cover apply to a lot of other avenues besides just Ignite Denver (read: these are just plain good workplace skills to have), so anyone can come and learn. I mean, that’s what we’re all about, right? Learning.

All of the meetings will take place at Shift Workspaces, one of our awesome sponsors, at 6 pm on the dates listed above.

We hope to see you at one or all of them, or any interval in between one and all.