1. Making Pasta Like a PRO – Shaheen Peerbhai (She’s India’s No. 1 food blogger. You may want to pay attention.)

2. Being Bawi – Mahafreed Irani (Trust us, there couldn’t be a better person to speak about this.)

3. Pimp my Rickshaw Ride! – Achint Parekh (The boy has some solid experience with rickshaws.)

4. Life is About Getting to the Hill-Station – Arjun Nair (No PJs here, unfortunately.)

5. God is Back. And How! – Rohan Babu (No social media expertise to be displayed. I think.)

6. Design Fascinates Me – Ayush Saran (It’ll fascinate you too. Honestly.)

7. Surviving the Shopping Trip – Rohan Joseph (Girl+Shopping+Boyfriend=*kaboom*)

8. There Once Was a Man – Ashtiaq Dalton (Only once, only a man)

9. Whatever! – Sudeshna Das (Whatever.)

By the way, we’ve put up even more tickets for those who haven’t gotten theirs yet. Go to http://ignitemumbai2.eventbrite.com and grab ‘em before they run out again! See you there!

Yes, it took a long time coming since our innocent little tweet way back in May but all that should matter is that you don’t have to wait much longer. Saturday, December 18 is the second edition of Ignite Mumbai!

For those new to the concept, Ignite is a fun evening of presentations on a variety of topics, with a twist. Each presentation has 20 slides, that automatically advance after 15 seconds. Ignite is meant to bring out your inner geek and share it with your community to add social value. It is a night of fun, knowledge-sharing and connections. Famously, Ignite’s motto is “Enlighten Us, But Make It Quick“.

When we launched Ignite Mumbai in April, we were genuinely overwhelmed with the response. Not only did we sell out in a matter of a few hours, we got a tremendous response from our speakers, all of whom gave Ignite Mumbai a touch of their personality.We might have started small but Ignite was a success even before the first of our charismatic speakers took to the stage.

And now, a good 8 months since that epic night, Ignite Mumbai is coming back. We have a bigger venue, a wider range of speakers and a promise of an even better night than last time. With some inside info on the speakers and their topics, we can assure you that we’re bloody excited to see this edition.

Here’s what you need to know-

Date:  Saturday, 18 December, 2010
Time: 5:30pm (gates open) 6pm-8pm talks
Venue: WTF, Versova, Andheri West (We <3 the ‘burbs )
Cost: Zero (a.k.a FREE!)

We have a larger venue this time around, but it’s still limited capacity. Entry will be on pre-registration only. Speakers will be announced and (free) tickets will be available starting Wednesday afternoon 3pm – DON’T MISS THIS!! And if the first time around was any indication, these tickets will fly off in a few hours! Ignite Mumbai is a community event put up by a bunch of like-minded volunteers. We are able to keep this event free due to the support of some great venues who open up their spaces for us. Our awesome venue partner for this edition is WTF, the shiny new bar in Versova.

Do follow us on Twitter or Like us on Facebook since those are the surefire channels to get the quickest updates on tickets, speakers and everything else.

And as the winter chills spread early in our city we see no better time to Ignite Mumbai! See you there.

You are already aware of the speakers and their topics they spoke on, you are also probably aware of how the night went, even if you couldn’t quite make it to the event. However, words can do only so much and the real thrill of Ignite is in watching the talks. The videos are a little dark, we had to switch off the lights to highlight the slides and it has pretty much made all the speakers look the same. However the decks and the audio shouldn’t give you any trouble.

We hope you have a good time watching this and if you like them please do share them on your networks or tweet them out.

How to hack your way to a BEST bus seat – Asfaq Tapia

The Problem With Happiness – Amit Klein

Power of online communities: The wisdom of the crowd – Aditya Rao

To the other shore – Krishna Venkitaraman

Peculiar Indian Habits and Their Use – Harshil Karia

Not Another NGO! Building a modern movement in India – Amanda White

Words spell Sword – Ralston D’souza

How to explain almost everything – Karan Talwar

Keeping A Couple Fight From Becoming A Break Up Fight – Rohan Joseph

Mumbai and You – Mansi Trivedi

You can also catch these videos on YouTube. Do subscribe to Ignite Mumbai at: http://www.youtube.com/user/ignitemumbai

Again, if you want to see your presentation up here mail us at speak[@]ignitemumbai[dot]com.

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)

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1. Asfaq Tapia

How to hack your way to a BEST bus seat
A guide for the tired Mumbaikar

2. Amanda White

Not Another NGO! Building a modern movement in India
NGOs in India face a variety of challenges in creating meaningful momentum and a positive public image. How can we utilize new resources and come up with new tactics to build a modern social movement?

3. Karan Talwar

How to explain almost everything
Finding extraordinary answers to ordinary questions

4. Harshil Karia

Interesting observations about Urban Indian Behaviour
What it tells us about our collective mindset, how it builds a definite language of Indian design and how it can be used for problem solving.

5. Rohan Joseph

Keeping A Couple Fight From Becoming A Break Up Fight
Don’t you hate when a stupid argument blows out of proportion and suddenly puts your entire relationship in jeopardy? This presentation is aimed at helping you avoid and limit those situations without negatively affecting your relationship.

6. Aditya Rao

Power of online communities: The wisdom of the crowd
The internet is bringing us together. The size of our tribe is increasing. Here’s what the future will look like. Expect Star Wars & Isaac Asimov.

7. Amit Klein

The Problem with Happiness
An introduction to the science of happiness

8. KN Venkitaraman

‘Let the waves carry you to another shore’
It’s ok to be a drifter and enjoy the scenery and not always be in control.

9. Mansi Trivedi

Mumbai and You
Based on the project called ‘Dsplaced’ that explores people’s relationships with the cities they live in. On how you start to realize that the city engrains its own essence in you. And the cities speak to you. Don’t just live in your city. Listen to it.

10. Ralston D’Souza

Words spell Sword
A presentation that will revolve around the sheer beauty of words and images. How words, when rearranged, mean something very different. Ambigrams, palindromes, anagrams, subliminal messages in images and an entire section dedicated to my favourite comic of all time, Benny Hill.

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Sounds fun? Yeah, we think so too. Remember, our speakers are regular people with a passion to share. Just like you.

Are you interested in speaking at the next edition of Ignite Mumbai (June/July)? Send in your presentation ideas to speak@ignitemumbai.com.

Quick details:

Date: Saturday, April 24th
Gates open: 5:30pm
Talks start: 6pm SHARP. The event will wrap in time for you to catch the IPL match
Venue: Cafe Goa, Bandra (Google Map)

Ignite Mumbai is going to be AWESOME. Get your ticket now.

Ignite is a night of presentations on a variety of topics, with a twist. Each presentation has 20 slides, that automatically advance after 15 seconds. Ignite is meant to bring out your inner geek and share it with your community to add social value. It is a night of fun, knowledge and connections. Ignite’s motto is “Enlighten Us, But Make It Quick“. Ignite began in Seattle in 2006 and has now made its way to the shores of Mumbai.

The inaugural edition of Ignite Mumbai is on Saturday, April 24th, 5:30-7:30pm at Cafe Goa in Bandra. Speakers will be announced and (FREE!) tickets will be available starting April 12th.

If you are interested in speaking, send in your presentation idea to Aviraj Saluja.

We are super excited and are putting in every effort to make Ignite Mumbai kick ass. Stay tuned for more information on this blog.