This is the story of how I ended up giving a talk about one of my geekiest hobbies to a bunch of Parisian and Silicon Valley software entrepreneurs.

can you find me? hint: front row

I was doing research for the Wiser Tuesday event that I am helping organize (I mentioned it before on this blog) a few weeks ago, and I reached out to an entrepreneur in Paris that has organized a similar event in the past. That event was an Ignite conference—a series of talks given by local geeks about anything that they find to be thought provoking. The gimmick of Ignite conferences is that presentations are exactly 20 slides long and the slides are auto-advanced every 15 seconds. I asked Phil Jeudy on Twitter what had happened to Ignite events in Paris since it looked like there hadn’t been one in a while. He responded,

Next one is September 29th. wanna do a prez?!

Yes!

To top it off, there would be a group of American entrepreneurs there from the Geeks on a Plane trip.

The setting

The talks were scheduled to start at 9:45pm, so I grabbed an apéro at a next door café, while I finished Richard Feynman’s The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. I ended up helping an Australian couple sitting next to me order wine (they couldn’t get the waiter to understand the word “dry”). At 9:30, I stepped into the Hard Rock Café, where the event was being held. I looked around, didn’t see any geeks, and asked a woman standing in front of some roped off stairs,

Je suis ici pour un truc qui s’appelle Ignite
(I’m here for a thing called Ignite)

She gave me a curt nod and ushered me up the stairs.

Wide-eyed

At the top of the stairs was a bar, a projector/chair setup, and a few dozen French folk. The geeks gave themselves away: while some were dressed well (remember that we’re in Paris), there was a good smattering of t-shirts and iPhones. I recognize Phil Jeudy. I shake his hand. I order a beer. I mill about. I pop in a few conversations in English, a few others in French. Phil Jeudy ushers the presenters to get ready.

And it’s real. There are about a hundred people here by now. Rock music is blaring underneath us. Brady Forrest, the global organizer for Ignite talks, takes the mic.

And the fun begins

Brady introduces Ignite to the audience. He launches into a talk about Burning Man. Here, I think is a good time to break from the narrative and point out some of the most interesting talks I heard.

(Note: If you know the names of who I forgot, let me know in the comments. Also, if you want me to link your name to something, let me know.)

Brady Forrest // Burning Man: Burning Man is a yearly, week-long event that loosely revolves around the construction and demolition of a city in the middle of the Nevada desert. It’s about a lot more than that, though: survival, art, geek culture, anti-culture, the list goes on. The most interesting thing to me is that people will demo technologies there that are not possible to demo in existing cities (think of things like ad-hoc cell phone networks).

// HADOPI: This talk was brilliant. HADOPI is a French copyright law that risks imposing seriously misguided restrictions on Internet use. The story around it involves bumbling ministers of technology, huge online backlash, and all kinds of French stereotypes. I don’t think that I’ve ever laughed so hard at a story about legislation.

Benjamin Joffe // Myths of Innovation: The presenter was returning from 10 years in Asia, learning about business innovation. He had some substantial insight into the difference between ideas, inventors, and entrepreneurs. The gist of it: there are way more ideas out there than we think; innovation comes from being able to pull them off. Reminds me of the 99 percent

Mike Butcher // European Startups: Just an all around fun talk from a passionate presenter. I asked him more about his talk later, and he regaled me with tales of wonderfully quirky startups: “Oh German startups are so organized. And the Dutch _never _talk. They’re, like, psychic.”

Dave McClure // StartUps 2.0: The Internet has changed thinking about business models. Dave ran through some his on ways to model business interactions to complement the Internet medium. Basically, in the software sphere, it has become viable to try a lot of ideas on a small scale, allowing investors to micro-fund a lot of ventures, only needing a few of them to make it big.

// Geeks in Africa: This speaker’s talk was drowned out by some mic trouble, but his slides were actually really thought provoking. He took us through some ideas for using technology successfully in Africa. He asked the crowd, what would it take to get technology “Made in Africa” recognized on a global scale? That is, what would it take to turn Africa into a viable contributor to the technology ecosystem, rather than just a consumer.

// Using WoW to find leaders: High level World of Warcraft requires some serious leadership to organize raids and deal with team conflicts. Recruiters might consider using it as a tool to find people suited to leadership. A lot has been written about this already, and it was kind of interesting to see a proponent in person. I was skeptical, though (especially considering that I played WoW for a while a few years ago), so I asked the presenter about it at dinner. He mentioned that he used is especially to connect with remote teammates. That was kind of cool (kind of like playing paintball from 1000 miles away), but it also reminds me of The Office episode about Call of Duty.

// Choice: Vietnamese Restaurants vs. Chinese Restaurants: I wish I remembered the details of this talk. I involved something about egg rolls and the long tail.

My talk (back to the narrative)

I was about the seventh talk up. Most people had had trouble being loud enough with the music in the background and an underpowered mic. I was scared because I’m not that great at being loud. Phil Jeudy hands me the microphone. I take of my jacket, taking one last moment before facing the crowd, then I turn around. A hundred faces look back at me.

Can you all hear me in the back?
No!

HOW ABOUT NOW? and so it started.

I gave a talk about pen spinning—the wonderful geek hobby that I was introduced to on my high school debate team. I started by asking the audience to get a pen, for those that didn’t have one, I threw some from a box that I had brought. I taught two tricks, and introduced the spinning community. I closed it up with some thoughts on the international, cross-cultural connections that pen spinning encourages.

I had a lot fun with the talk. I walked into the audience and gave quick pointers. One guy spun a pen and it flew out of his hand and landed on somebody’s table on the level below us. I knew the timing of my slides really well, so I was able to ad-lib some of them based on the reactions of the audience. At one point I was planning to say,

Spinners from around the world compete against one another in the World Cup of Pen Spinning. This is a picture of its most recent champion.

Instead, I think I said,

And this spinnerpeem, the best fuckin spinner in the world. (people cheered)

I heard there’s about a 10 second clip of my presentation floating around somewhere…I really that I can find it.