Igniting A Fire For Community

Who says the artist and the techie can't be friends? Or the bureaucrat and the academic?

Challenging this assumption en masse, Baltimore's young professionals turned out June 26 in standing-room-only droves for the third staging of Ignite Baltimore, a networking bonanza that follows a beguiling format: roughly two-dozen speakers take the stage, each for exactly five minutes, and speak about a topic that interests them with the aid of 20 slides programmed to change every 15 seconds. No extra time, no going back to the last slide.

Engineering connections

Held at The Windup Space, a grittily chic bar and arts venue on W. North Avenue, the June event dazzled an audience of some 250 with the performance equivalent of enfilade fire: it was dramatic, noisy, and hit a lot of marks in little time. A visual artist discussed her recent experiment with ritualized eavesdropping; a designer platitudinized about personal growth; an advertising exec spoke of her love of tea; a Department of Parks official expounded on the environmental and emotional benefits of trees. A more desultory discussion would be hard to design.

And that's exactly the point. Conceived in Seattle two years ago, the Ignite format has been replicated in cities all over the world as a tool for sparking discussion among disparate social and professional groups. It was brought to Baltimore for the first time in October by local entrepreneurs Mike Subelsky, co-founder of e-mail software startup OtherInbox, and Patti Chan, co-founder of 600 Block, a Web site that tracks retail and restaurant specials.

"Baltimore is very socially and racially segregated, unfortunately," says Subelsky. "I don't think the various creative communities are that segregated, but there could be a lot more interaction. I think that's probably a feature of our economy being so obsessed with specialization. All cities have this problem."

The Subelsky effect

A native of Wheaten, Md., Subelsky was motivated to start Ignite after helping launch the Baltimore Improv Group and discovering that Baltimore "was a do-it-yourself kind of town. I thought it might help our tech economy grow and I thought it would be a fun chance to meet new people."

It was, and so the first Ignite was followed by a second in February, and the city quickly latched on, devoting time and money to the initiative. June's Ignite #3 was sponsored by more than a dozen local businesses and organizations, including FastSpot, an interactive agency that created a full-screen Twitter board behind the stage, and the philanthropically oriented ice cream company Taharka Bros., which donated dessert (and gave an impromptu presentation on community outreach at the end of the evening). The event was also Webcast live by RADARREDUX.net, a project of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance in partnership with the Maryland Institute College of Art and John Hopkins University.

Plans for Ignite Annapolis and Ignite D.C. have already been announced, and Ignite Baltimore #4 has been scheduled for Oct. 22 at the Walters Art Museum, which can accommodate twice the crowd of The Windup Space. (Organizers plan to put out calls for speakers soon.) The pro-tech impetus behind the project has not circumscribed the nature of the speakers in any way. The less alike the better, as far as Subelsky is concerned.

"There are always a few [speakers] that are audience favorites, and a few that are 'way out there,'" he notes.

Icebreakers

Ignite #3 crowd pleasers included Roy Taff, a member of the Baltimore Improv Group, who reflected that applying to daily living the rules of improv � have an objective, say yes to every scenario, and have fun � "can save your life and save your soul"; Steve Kozak, Greater Baltimore Technology Council executive director, who made a humorous and statistically compelling argument for liberally sharing business contacts; and Will Noel, curator of manuscripts at the Walters Art Museum, who with his British wit made his struggle to restore the museum's ultra-rare Archimedes Palimpsest entertaining.

Then there were the more obtuse (to be kind) presentations, including a poem and interpretive dance about the meaning of life by Plato Hieronimus, managing partner of the strategic marketing firm The Selling Well; a head-scratcher of a micro-dissertation called "The Case For Being a Generalist" by blogger Matt Castner; and an off-the-cuff discussion of personal branding by Bryan Liles, a web development advocate, that degenerated into a loose eulogy for and, in response to audience heckling, a testy defense of Michael Jackson (whose death hit the news as the doors to Ignite were opening).

Judging by crowd size and enthusiasm, Ignite Baltimore looks to be a permanent fixture on the city's networking landscape. Subelsky considers it "part of a whole movement going on in Baltimore" in which "Marylanders are organizing themselves to change our economy" � a movement that includes BarCamp, TED-x Mid-Atlantic, Refresh, SocialDevCamp, Outlet Baltimore, and Bootstrap MD.

"Maryland and Baltimore do have thriving technology economies, but service companies and companies that sell to the federal government dominate," Subelsky explains. "At its core, Ignite is intended to speed up the communication of new ideas, which I hope will have the side-effect of encouraging more technology companies that build products, which would help diversify our tech economy."