Community speaker series in which each presenter has exactly five minutes and 20 auto-advancing slides to inspire the audience with ingenuity, humor and imagination.
Ignite Philly returns to Johnny Brenda's on Wednesday, October 21, for another night of the city's longest-running community speaker series. If you've never been, the format is the whole point: every presenter gets exactly 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds, five minutes flat, no mercy. It's a fast-paced, high-pressure way to get a lot of ideas into one room in a single evening.
The Philadelphia chapter launched in 2008, two years after the format started in Seattle, and its first edition packed Johnny Brenda's in Fishtown. Since then, it's grown into one of the city's most enduring traditions, with hundreds of speakers passing through the format over the years. The 2018 edition, the twenty-first, marked a decade of ideas. This year's lineup is put together by co-founder Geoff DiMasi, Christine Knapp, Claire Robertson-Kraft, and guest curator Hillary Do.
The goal is to spark ingenuity, humor, and imagination, with talks that act as a call to action and point the way toward a better future. The appeal is getting inspired by people you've never heard of, as well as some you never thought you'd run into at JB's. It's a community-driven night, and the five-minute limit keeps things moving fast.
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Doors open at 6 PM and the talks start at 7 PM. Tickets run from $26 to $251 via TicketLeap, and the whole event is 21+ with a valid ID required. Johnny Brenda's is at 1201 N. Frankford Ave in Fishtown.
