Liverpool Life Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking (assuming boring someone’s ear off about some or film other doesn’t count), I didn’t take up the invitation to speak at last night's Ignite 3 event at Liverpool’s Static Gallery, which is just as well since, with only five minutes to fill and the need to time the presentation to the shuffling of Power Point slides every fifteen seconds I would suspect I’d get a bit lost. There is a skill to speaking passionately about a subject you’re passionate about to the point and without repetition or deviation and seemingly naturally which I’ve never quite mastered (confirming that boring someone’s ear off about some film or other really doesn’t count).
Taking place in the concrete basement of a small warehouse, this Ignite had the atmosphere of a 60s gathering, albeit without a waft of fuddy cigarette smoke and someone throwing up in the corner. Certainly describing the event to a taxi driver on my way into town (I was running late) I did manage to make it sound like the oddest of group behaviours, him only really being convinced when I said “It’s an internet thing” as though that explains everything. In hindsight what I could have suggested is that it’s a kind of verbal blogging, and indeed sifting through short pieces about disparate subject was rather like navigating the news feeds in Google Reader. An internet thing.
The majority of the talks were (perhaps correctly given the title of the event) designed to inspire. Mandy Philips followed Danny Wallace’s lead via the Jim Carey film The Yes Men and decided to say yes to everything for a year which led to her running the first Liverpool Twestival, the gathering which surely led to all of these subsequent events and reignited a cheekiness in her that we should all learn from. David Bartlett described his house renovation and how he needed to learn new skills to survive. Ella Wredenfors's talk about cannibalism was just as inspiring in its own way, not in terms of the best way to cook up human flesh, but the obsession to solve the mystery of what happened to the arctic explorer Sir John Franklin Story and his men.
But there was also a huge sense of fun. Alex Nolan’s system’s failure approach to Batman’s villains was delivered in full costume, the Adam West model perhaps to underscore the irony of his own surname in relation to the dark knight. Rosie Harris’s warnings about the dangers of homicidal cows was possibly the funniest of the evening through some clever timing and brilliantly pitched slides sending up the nature of the irrelevant guff that usually appears as bullet points. The vast range of topics is on their website. The actual talks will also be uploaded very soon. But just for now, here’s Deena Denaro’s entertaining Nokia Subvertisement created to criticise a competition that the company was running about social conscience (despite its actions in Iran) that inadvertantly found itself being selected …
See also: Alistair Houghton's coverage of the event which has actual quotes.
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