Last night's Ignite NYC II was a major success! We had 500 people fill up two floors of the New World Stages theatre space. Thank you to the New York Television Festival (NYTVF) for donating such an incredible venue and for the free beer!

The night started out with a Cupcake Design Competition which was as colorful and messy and fun as you could hope for. Thanks to Bre Pettis for organizing it! Nick and Danielle Bilton were the grand champions at the Cupcake Decorating Championships. Twelve contestants made it to the final round as champions and each of the twelve champions got a cupcake champion medal!

The diversity and the incredible quality of the Ignite Talks made for quite an entertaining hour! The audience heard Debora Shultz talking about the differences between the Alley vs. the Valley, Jen Pahlka presenting a talk titled "Jello & Web 3.0", Kati London talk about plants taking over the world, Nate Westheimer talking about magic at the Democratic National Convention, Andrew Schneider performing with his Experimental Devices for Performance, Raffi Krikorian talking about his open database for energy consumption, Sam Lessin of Drop.io talking about privacy in our data-deluged world, Nichelle Stephens on how cupcakes are the iPhones of Desserts, Don Carli explaining the carbon footprints of banner ads, emails, and websites, Audacia Ray showing how porn has been a front runner in technology innovations, and lastly, Jason Grigsby showing us how Cup Noodle is the poster child of innovation through Manga!

We'll have info where you can get the slides and videos soon. For now we ask that if you took pictures and video, we encourage you to tag them:
ignitenyc
ignitenycII
nytvf
We have a flickr group and also a drop.io page for you to add media to!

If you are interested in speaking at or sponsoring the next Ignite, please contact Tikva Morowati at tikva is at gmail dot com.

Brady Forrest, co-creator of Ignite, just posted some of the confirmed speakers for the next Ignite! Ignite NYC II: Energy, Cupcakes, and Alley vs. Valley

On the night before the Web 2.0 Expo NY Ignite is coming back to NYC! On September 15th we will have 10 Ignite speakers who each get just five minutes on stage. Bre Pettis, the other co-creator of Ignite will be hosting a cupcake decorating contest. Ignite is going to be at New World Stages (340 West 50th Street) where we are a guest of the New York Television Festival. They are providing us a ~400 person theatre and free beer (during the cupcake contest).

Raffi Krikorian - holmz : open database for energy consumption
Deb Schultz - Alley vs Valley
Jennifer Pahlka - Technology Anxiety: Jello and Web 3.0
Sam Lessin - A very brief history of privacy in our data-deluged world
Nichelle Stephens - Cupcakes: The iPhone of Desserts
Don Carli - The Carbon Footprint of Banner Ads, Emails and Websites and why you should care
Nate Westheimer - Magic at the Democratic National Convention
Andrew Schneider - Experimental Devices for Performance
Audacia Ray - Porn as a front runner in technology innovations... With a twist

Here is a rough schedule for how the night will go.
7:15 Door & Bar opens
7:30 Cupcake Contest Begins
8:15 Cupcakes Contest Ends
8:45 Ignite Talks Begin
9:45 Ignite talks end; upstairs bar opens

If you plan on entering the cupcake decorating competition plan on bringing your own decorations. We will have some on-hand but if you are going to be the cupcake decorating champion of NYC then you'll need to bring something unique. You will not be required to use our cupcakes; feel free to bring your own.

RSVP at Upcoming or Facebook to give us an idea of how many people to expect (but you do not have to).

O'Reilly Media & TechWeb's Web 2.0 Expo starts next week! Ignite NYC is jump starting the event-filled week, and Garysguide.org put together a list of the other parties, mixers & events happening around it. Check it out!

On Monday September 15th we'll be doing Ignite talks in NYC again! These talks will each be 5 minutes long with 20 slides and only 15 seconds a slide (they auto-advance). We want to hear your cool ideas, hacks, lessons, and "war stories". What do you want to talk about? If you haven't seen an Ignite talk watch some videos at http://ignitenight.blip.tv

From time to time, we plan on bringing you news of Ignite speakers and other players in the Ignite community in NYC and around the world. Today, I have the honor of telling you that Bre Pettis, co-founder of Ignite and friend, has a new project under way and it's a TV show pilot on the History Channel! It's called History Hacker and will premiere Friday, September 26th at 8pm and at Midnight.

Over the course of the show Bre learns about the inventors and inventions of the past and then hack the inventions together out of stuff found in his closet. Plus, he has a way to make the most complicated technical things so simple!

Bre writes, "The first pilot episode is all about Nikola Tesla who is an amazing character. He’s the man responsible for the current that comes out of your wall sockets. He battled Thomas Edison in the war of currents and won. He had over 300 patents and besides figuring out AC power, he came up with radio control and mucked about with electricity more than anybody.

In the show, I blow a glass tube from molten silica with Kevin at Scanlan Glass and then fill it neon gas with Dave of Tecnolux. I made an AC generator with my pal Raphael of NYCResistor. It got enough pedal power going to power a neon tube!"

Bre used to be a preschool teacher, and I believe he has a way to teach children and adults technology and science in a simple and fun manner. People might learn something watching the show that might not have otherwise because Bre is so fun and explains concepts in such a way that anyone could understand them!

If enough people watch this pilot, it’s likely that the show will go to season and we'll get to see more of him! So please watch it and support Bre! Tell your mom and your friends!

The first Ignite NYC on July 29th was an incredible success. Over 400 geeks came out to watch presentations by NYC's finest minds, and it was covered by the New York Times.

The next Ignite NYC II is just around the corner and will be an even bigger party! Ignite NYC II Kicks Off the Week for Web 2.0 Expo New York Co-Presented by the New York Television Festival (NYTVF). This gathering of media and web enthusiasts will be held on Monday, September 15th, 7pm – 11:30pm at New World Stages, 340 West 50th Street.

Our first Ignite NYC had a hard start with a pre-show soldering contest created by Ignite co-founder, Bre Pettis. This time around Bre and hosts are presenting the first 200 attendees with a cupcake, which can either be devoured on the spot or used for the pre-show cupcake decorating contest! The NYTVF is donating free beer during this part of the night!

Then, starting at 9 pm the ten featured talks will begin. Each speaker gets only five minutes on stage to present 20 slides that auto-forward after 15 seconds.

Thanks so much to Make Magazine for sharing this great video of the inaugural Ignite NYC's soldering competition, and congratulations to the all the participants on a job well done.

Couldn't make it out to join us back in July? Now you know what you're missing if you skip the next one! If you did attend and you've got video or photos from the event, please share them with us by adding them to our Vimeo or Flickr groups—and make sure to tag them with ignitenyc!

Here is a list of the incredible speakers from NYC's very first Ignite with links to their sites to let them speak for themselves! Thanks to all who came out and made it such a success!

• Jessica Bruder (author, journalist-at-large) - How to be an Undercover Hooker (reprising her talk on taking an NYPD course)

• Tony Bacigalupo (New Work City, CoWorkingNY) - NYC's Startup Scene: Where are the geeks?

• Tom Igoe (NYU's ITP, Arduino) - Physical Computing's Greatest Hits (or Misses)

• Rose White (Yarnivore) - Weird and wonderful knitting -- graffiti and science and art combined!

• Audacia Ray (Village Voice's Naked City - NSFW) - Porn as a front runner in technology innovations

• Charlie O'Donnell (Path 101, This Is Going To Be Big) - Shaving your head: When to start, how to maintain, and to BIC or not to BIC?

• Charles Forman (ImInLikeWithYou) - How to date celebrichauns with founder fetish

• Natalie Jeremijenko (NYU XDesign) - A bomb shelter for the climate crisis

• Pat Allan (Free-Lancing Gods) - So you're a kick-arse coder...

• Joel Johnson (Boingboing) - Indie Games: At Least They're Free!

• Nick Bilton (NY Times, NYC Resistor) - The Future of News

• Dustyn Roberts (NYU's ITP, Honeybee Robotics) - Flying High with Engineers Without Borders (on building a Kite Aerial Photography rig for mapping in Kenya)

• Nate Westheimer (Rose Tech Ventures) - The Charisma Economy: Success in the age of authenticity

• David Rose (Rose Tech Ventures) - How to get your startup funded

• Peter Kirn (Created Digitial Motion) - 20 Stupidly-Simple Code Sketches: Say Hello, World Visually

• Limor Fried (ladyada) & Phillip Torrone (Make & Citizen Engineer) - Open source hardware, hacking SIM cards, modding a payphone for fun and for profit.