Category — Events

I can’t say enough great things about Ignite Lansing 3.0. It was a spectacular event that blew away my highest expectations. The crew was amazing. The venue was amazing. Everything was, at the risk of being repetitive, amazing.

I arrived on scene at 6:00 PM as the speakers were told to do, the interior of the Knapp’s Building was a buzzing hive of activity. Lights. Lasers (yes, laser). Cameras. They were all alive.

I had my pre-show briefing with show runners (Nick, Ben), the MC and the stage manager, Melissa. I was happy to see I could use a hand held mic, as I wanted to be mobile during my speech.

Around 7:00, the floodgates opened and attendees started arriving. It was energetic chaos (I mean that in a good way). Dozens filled the line for the Cravings Popcorn bar (my LansingNext co-host Julielyn helped as a volunteer).

The evening was pretty much a blur for me until I had my cue to head for the stage around 9:00 PM. I was in Group C, the last of the three groups of presenters. The crowd had thinned a bit by this point, but it was still very much a packed house.

I was pumped, primed and ready.

I took the stage and killed. My choice to go for the silly, crazy presentation worked. Had a lot of great crowd reactions (although my spork joke at the open didn’t seem to go over that well). I’m glad I decided to wear an eye-patch and to do a “character voice,” the crowd ate it up.

Five minutes later, it was all over. I received scores of compliments afterward, both in person and online.

Better still, I took First Place for my group. Bam.

I think I had third place overall. I don’t know when the video will be on YouTube, but I will post that asap once it becomes available.

Thanks to everyone at Ignite Lansing for putting on a great event!

This scene from ERNEST SAVES CHRISTMAS inspired my presentation a bit.

I am one of the presenters at tonight’s Ignite Lansing 3.0 at the Knapp’s Building in downtown Lansing.

For those unfamiliar, the Ignite events are held around the world and the idea is you get people together and share ideas in five minutes.

That’s right, five minutes.

Five minutes, 22 slides, 15 seconds a slide. That’s a lot of information to cram into such a brief amount of time.

And of course, being the crazy person I am, I signed up to be a presenter. Visitors to the Ignite Lansing website voted on which presentations they wanted to see. I was fortunate enough to be chosen.

I am equal parts nervous and excited about this opportunity. I’ll be speaking in front of a group of hundreds in the building, as well as being streamed online. Afterward, the presentation will be archived for all to see on YouTube. The presentations can be watched at video.ignitelansing.com (I go on at 9:15 PM EST).

So yes, I’ll be speaking in front of a crowd nearing 600, not to mention many more watching online. This is quite a bit of pressure, but I’m up to it.

My presentation is called How to Survive Writing a Novel.

Now, I do not plan for this to be a five minute promotion of the Magic of Eyri, I am not that shameless of a self-promoter. I do list myself as the author of it on my title slide, but I felt it was necessary to show the audience that I actually wrote a novel.

I am taking a very funny, zany approach to this and I don’t want to give too much away ahead of time. Although I have been dropping hints here and there, especially on this week’s episode of LansingNext.

My goal is not to be boring. I am treating this as more of a performance piece than a presentation, if that makes sense. I’ll be digging into my improv comedy toolbox a bit, and just having fun.

If I can share information and entertain at the same time, awesome.

I shall post a link to the YouTube video once it is online. Wish me luck!

2010 is the year I’m trying different things and kinda going wherever life leads me. With that in mind, I agreed to sign up for the Lansing Race for the Cure 5K run in April.

There is another reason I opted to do this: my mom is a 20-year breast cancer survivor.

Both my mom and my sister have been very involved in the Detroit Race for the Cure for years. I’ve helped out here and there, such as (in)famously offering to be stage security for former-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick a few years ago.

A group of friends here in Lansing started chatting about the Race via Twitter a few weeks ago, and I decided “oh, why not?” Thus, Team Thanks for the Mammaries was born (if you’re in Lansing and wish to join, search for the #LoveLansing “company” name on the race website).

It hit me last week that I actually needed to train for this thing.

I am not a runner. We tend not to get along. But, some members of my team pointed me to the Couch to 5K training program and sang its praises. After looking over the schedule/routine, I decided “hey, I can do this.”

While studying the routine, I quickly realized why I never had much luck running in the past–I was doing too much, too soon. I liked that this routine has you starting out with a “jog for 60 seconds, walk for 90 seconds” plan.

Thinking back on the past times I’ve tried jogging I remembered that I did nothing like this at all–I just ran and ran for the whole time, without working up to anything.

No wonder I felt like I died each time doing.

Yesterday was my first training run and it was, as the they say in Italian,”non ce’ male.”

Yes, it was cold and I hated having to wait for traffic lights, but darn it, I survived. Better still, I didn’t feel sick afterward.

The only problem, training for running in winter is going to be a challenge (read: snow and/or ice) around here, but I’ll make due.

I opted for the fancy race registration where they give you a chip (not potato) to track your time. So, I guess I am ‘competing.’

Yikes. Wish me luck.

Some big news this week:

Tomorrow night (12.15.09) I will be presenting at DemoCamp Lansing in Harper’s Brew Pub in East Lansing.  I’ll be talking about podcasting. I have five minutes to rap about podcasting to a room full of (mostly) strangers. It should be interesting, as I have yet to really work out my battle plan.

Speaking of making it up as I go, I found out today that I made it to the Sweet Sixteen of PowerPoint Karaoke 2009, which really surprised me (thanks to everyone who voted for me, you are all awesome).

The idea of PowerPoint Karaoke (aka BattleDecks) is that you give a presentation–but you don’t know what your PowerPoint slides are going to be about.  In our case, we knew our topic (mine was the economy).

Watch the video below (or watch it on the YouTube).

If you like what you see, please vote for me. If I make it to the next round (the Elite Eight) I get a prize of some kind. Awesome.

That’s right y’all, you can listen to the audio from the panel on Fantasy Writing I was a part of on September 1.

http://magicofeyri.com/2009/09/fantasy-writing-panel-podcast/

The panel featured Jim C. Hines (Goblin Quest series, Stepsister Scheme, Mermaid’s Madness), Phil Kline (Curse of the Kitsune) and myself.  It runs about 49 minutes and is worth a listen–especially when Jim starts talking about his werewolf-muppet story.

The audio quality is not on par with my normal episodes, as I just set up a recorder on the table and let it go, but I did what I could in GarageBand to make it a little better (tried to cut out some of the long pauses too).

This Sunday, instead of the next (exciting) episode of the Magic of Eyri Podcast (“Double Trouble”) I shall be running the audio from the panel discussion about fantasy writing I was a part of at the Delta Township District Library on September 1st.

Joining me in splendid 64 kps glory are Jim C. Hines and Phil Kline.  I haven’t listened to the audio yet, but I’m sure it turned out just fine (or fine enough for this purpose).

I’m curious how this will turn out and if people will like it or not. This will not be a regular feature, but I know people do enjoy this sort of thing (listening to writers talk about writing)–otherwise no one would ever attend any of the panels I’m on. I keep meaning to record non-podcast stuff to have at the ready if I ever need filler in case I don’t have an episode ready or something comes up (illness, vacation, pirate-ninjas).

Regular transmission of episodes will continue on September 27th.