Category Archives: ignite seattle

How I Learned to Like Ballet (Being Married to a Professional Ballet Dancer) – A Primer on Ballet

Posted by Todd Sawicki on August 4, 2009 View Comments
(CC) Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com

(CC) Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com

Last night I got to give a presentation at Ignite Seattle 7 titled “How I Learned to Like Ballet (being married to a professional ballet dancer)” – here’s the abstract for the talk:

“Often times we see talks about how spouses deal with being married to geeks and startup jocks, now its time to turn the tables. This is a talk on what I’ve learned about ballet and how to appreciate it being married to a former professional ballerina. Hopefully you too will be able to tell the difference between a first and fifth position and a Plié vs. a Passé. Even a geek can learn to love classical dance.”

And here are the slides:

For those not famaliar Ignite is an event where speakers present on a variety of topics using a very proscriptive presentation format – 20 slides, 5 minutes with the slides auto-advancing every 15 seconds.

It was estimated that over 700 came out to event and I hope everyone enjoyed my talk and had a great time.  I look forward to speaking again (this was my second time).  Even as someone who has given 100′s of talks in my career, this is by far one of the toughest venues.  Part talent-show for grown ups and part performance art, it’s a lot of fun to try and impart wisdom, humor and information in just 5 minutes.

Thanks to Brady, et al. for organizing the event and til next time!

I’m Alive and Presenting Next Week at Ignite Seattle (Feb 19)

Posted by Todd Sawicki on February 15, 2008 View Comments

I’ve been uber-swamped with work, projects, advisory stuff and everything else that comes along with being knee-deep in startup-land and thus despite having lots of things I want to blog just not finding the time these days. Lookery’s going great – just wrapping up our seed round with some very cool folk as well as seeing an almost overwhelming response to our ad program for social net apps. And of course Lookery is even hiring.

Despite all that, I am excited to be presenting next week at Ignite Seattle (Tues. Feb 19 at the Capital Hill Arts Center). My presentation is titled “The History of Online Advertising.” Hopefully the local folks can make it out. Ignite is a lot of fun and draws great crowds.