5 minutes and 20 slides rotating automatically in front of NYC’s brightest geeks, what would you say? For nearly two years Ignite NYC has cultivated a vibrant community of artists, technologists, thinkers, tinkerers, and personalities to connect, develop new relationships and projects, and answer this challenge. Enlighten us, but make it quick!

Team

Tikva Morowati - Director & Curator

Tikva has curated and organized Ignite NYC since 2008. That's nearly two years, 10 events, 150 speakers and 5,000 attendees! She chooses a selection of speakers to bring out the diversity of the NYC technology communities such as Dennis Crowley, Cindy Gallop, Hilary Mason, Kevin Slavin, Baratunde Thurston, and Noah Zerkin. She brings on sponsors who have a similar ethos such as Yahoo! Developer Network, LaughingSquid, Rackspace, and ReadWriteWeb.

Outside of Ignite, Tikva's research offers insight into product strategy, design, and user experience. She's presented at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, Microsoft Research, and the Come Out & Play Festival, and has testified on data privacy to the Federal Trade Commission. She holds a Master's degree from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP).  At present, Tikva's Community User Experience chops are being used up at an exciting, pre-launch startup called knowmore.

Tikva is at tikvamorowati.com.
Twitter: @tikkers     Email: tikvais [at] gmail dot com 

Sandhya Moraes - Art Direction/Graphic Design

Sandhya Moraes is an interactive art director. She has worked for CONNECT NYC, MIAAC, MTVTHINK, NYU-CSAAH, RGA & DRAFTFCB. She relishes mixing thinking design with human relationships to produce memorable interactions, like PEOPLEJuice. She has an MFA Design+Technology from Parsons School of Design.

Sandhya is at sandhyamoraes.com.

Twitter: @sandhyaX    Email: sandhya dot moraes [at] gmail dot com

 

Martha Denton - Presentation Guru

New to the team and a former IGNITE speaker, Martha is a freelance professional visual communications, branding and ideation specialist with over 6 years experience designing, running and coaching presentations from small entrepreneurs to Fortune 100 companies to top non-profits like the the NYC Marathon and more.  Martha is somewhat overly obsessed with PowerPoint and firm advocate of teaching good presentation design based on audience preferences, content and visual strategy.  Martha belongs to the PSFK Purple List, VizThink and the Wenovski UnConferences.
Twitter: @marden928

Song Hia - Community Manager

Song Hia is a freelance radio producer and writer specializing in technology, internet culture, emerging media, and business. He has produced, written, and occasionally appeared as a guest speaker for NPR member stations WYPR, WEAA, and WNYC. Previous to this, he organized concerts, did publicity for a film festival, and produced interactive curriculum for online learning programs.

Song is at songhia.com.

Twitter: @songhia     Email: song dot hia [at] gmail dot com

Meghan Paul Molino - Event Production & Sponsorships

Meghan is a product launch specialist obsessed with technology, startups, and big ideas.  She loves bringing people together. Before joining American Express’s awesome new digital payment platform team, Serve, Meghan was a founding member of local start-up Solvate.com.
At Ignite NYC, she produces some of the city's favorite events and handles all the nitty gritty logistics.  Meghan graduated from Vanderbilt University in 2005 and now lives in Brooklyn.  
Twitter: @megabucks11