The duality of perspectives at last night’s Ignite Mumbai was evident through the show as well as the hours beyond it. So there were talks which folks enjoyed while a few others thought it didn’t live up to expectations. Points of view floated over butter chicken and even more buttery Rotis about #iLiked #Disliked and the #awesome. The talks themselves where contrarian with suggestions of adopting better habits fighting another that suggests you channel them better. From drifting along in life to taking control of your relationships. My own perspectives as an organizer and an attendee. 
And it is this mild clashes of perception that I think made the night so awesome. Everyone took something home and everyone had views completely their own to share. Mumbai did Ignite last night.
We started a little behind schedule thanks to a little traffic and little more ISTness on our part. Most of you might already know that the organizing bunch are novices in, for lack of a better word… organizing. In fact this is the first time any of us were putting up an event. The fall out of which were a bunch of things to learn and review and a checklist for the next Ignite.
Ignite Mumbai Kicks Off (photo courtesy @eklavyab)
Learn Kia:
Give scope for interaction. Give dope for interaction- In hindsight when I look at the event, I would have loved a small 10 seconder on each speaker on who they are and what they do. We should have tweeted out their Twitter IDs, made sure everyone knows the hashtag for the event, etc for the tweople. And on a wider note herded the audience better, especially for an event that didn’t have any precedence to look at.
Of course planning slightly earlier team meetings keeping in mind our propensity for pushing things to the last minute is valuable lesson we gathered. Posters, some fun stuff and other such interesting thoughts floated but were never pursued with vigour, again a matter of not much concern but noteworthy nevertheless. Co-ordination and accountability follows these points.
On the other hand (the duality strikes back), the bright side of these slips was that the focus of the event was completely where it should have been – the talks.
Once we set our apparatus to document this experiment, the only thing that flowed (besides the occassional beer) were some awesome decks with some even better talking. We hope the vodka shots helped our awesome speakers, Carl from Cafe Goa was awesome to have suggested this idea. Cafe Goa was also perhaps the perfect setting to launch Ignite Mumbai thought a litle tricky to find.
Bol Dia:
We wanted Ignite Mumbai to start with something Bambaiyya and we couldn’t have had a better topic than finding a seat in a BEST by Asfaq Tapia, who incidentally was also the first speakers to sign up for Ignite. The rest of our 9 awesome speakers lit up the stage with their bright decks and brighter talks. Will let the attendees, their tweets and once the videos are up you guys to talk about the talks. Of course we had hiccups on our part with some slide transission issues. Though the audience was kind enough to acknowledge it as a a minor hiccup and let us off on that.
Lesson no.3 nevertheless.
Barring that the talks went smooth. Delving into individual decks and talks would be unfair and perhaps too subjective for me to comment on here. However, it is undeniable that the reason Ignite Mumbai can now look forward to its second edition is purely because of the speakers.
Ignite as a show can be made or broken in 5 minutes. Given this reason we needed speakers who understood not just the format of Ignite but also its spirit better. All 10 speakers did an admirable job of keeping that spirit up, in fact they took it higher. When we first spoke of Ignite in our circles we wondered if people would get the idea of presentations for fun, but Mumbai surprised us… and pleasantly at that. The night therefore truly belonged to these guys, they made Ignite happen. Not us.
It is my hope that this spirit runs through all the speakers we hope to have in the future. (email speak@ignitemumbai.com if you are keen. FYI, the spirit: enlighten us, keep it quick, keep it Mumbai)
