Last Tuesday, we both had the opportunity to speak at Ignite SF, a series of talks hosted by O’Reilly. The concept is simple: 16 speakers, each speaker gets 5 minutes and 20 slides that automatically rotate every 15 seconds. This speaking format is loosely based on a Japanese tradition called Pecha Kucha. A wide variety of speakers participate in Ignite talks, though many of them are involved in the tech community is some way.

We decided to do this together because we are excited about the possibility of one day working together (we’re fascinated by the idea of working couples, you can find a good list here). Much as our blog provides us an opportunity to jointly work on ideas and get some experience working together (and learning how to critique each other without getting feelings hurt), we thought this talk would be a fun opportunity to participate in an event together.

Toby talked about social data mining and how cultural insights can be obtained by analyzing data available on community websites. He drew on material in his book, as well as some new work. A Bayesian analysis of personal ads on Craigslist showed that New Yorkers like to talk about their sexual preferences, Bostonians about sports teams and that people in San Francisco use the word “tee” for T-shirt. He also talked about data-mining on Hot Or Not, Zillow, Technorati and Google Groups.

Brooke talked about web 2.0 in non-tech organizations, using the knowledge management system her company, Katzenbach Partners, recently developed as an example. Brooke had written a case study for business school on this topic, as part of her efforts to develop expertise in how concepts that have taken hold in the tech world can be applied in more traditional, less tech-y organizations.

All in all, the event was a success. Below are some insights into our experiences:

Toby: I really enjoy public speaking — I always get so nervous beforehand, but once I’m in front of the crowd I start to feel a lot of energy. Despite being about data analysis talk was fairly light-hearted and got quite a few laughs from the crowd who enjoyed seeing their culture reduced to a few quips. The talk was only 5 minutes, but the format is quite unforgiving and I was very glad to have practiced many times beforehand. Here are my bullet points:

• Pictures and charts are better than text in slides, particularly if you’re trying to be entertaining. The best talks were mostly about the words and used images to enhance the message. The internet has lots of pictures, you have no excuse to just be reading your bullet points.
• My friendLane told me afterwards: “What I learned from your talk is that the way to be funny is to juxtapose the intellectual with the degenerate”. I think this is probably true.
• Somepeople said nice things about us on their blogs. Since they were at the talks and likely live in San Francisco, sending an email or an IM to thank them often results in a new social connection.
• I give much better talks when standing than when sitting down.
• This high-speed format feel much more natural to me than giving a 3-hour tutorial, like I did at OSCON.

Brooke: All in all, this was really rewarding - I recently saw a fortune cookie that said “try something that scares you every day” - this definitely fit that description, and I learned a lot from the experience. This was the first time I had spoken in front of such a large group - so I was clearly the newbie in this crowd and a bit nervous! I was also quite aware that I was a bit more business-focused than many of the speakers or members of the audience. A few learnings:

• Preparing for something like this with somebody makes it much more fun - Toby and I basically spent all day Sunday working on our slides and planning our talks. It was great to have somebody to bounce ideas off of, and it was fun - much better than going it alone
• Quickly rotating slides force you to know exactly what you’re going to say at every step of the way - it’s a great way to prepare for a speech, it forces you to be concise, and it forces you to significantly cut down the amount of text on a slide (something many of us management consultants struggle with)
• I need to do things like this more so I can get more comfortable on stage! I can practice all I want, but there’s nothing like the real thing, so to speak (many thanks toTom for some tips)
• These kinds of events are great for pushing your thinking and others’. It’s also a great way to connect with other people who are interested in similar things, and to hear some candid feedback from people who aren’t fully immersed in your work

B&T: The quality of the other talks was very high. The event organize, Brady Forrest, had sent us YouTube videos of some of his favorite ones from the past - this managed to set expectations very well. We were particulary impressed with Brian O’Sullivan, who managed to give a talk about the generally inaccessible topic of functional programming that was actually entertaining to our non-tech friends in the audience, and local celebrity Violet Blue, whose talk was entitled “Porn or not?” (hopefully this gives you some idea just how varied the talks were)

We’re both really glad we did this. Perhaps we’ll look for a joint speaking opportunity next!

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