[secondary artif@cts]

61% of comments by Identity! 

Great data to support a long held notion of mine. 

My first comment on this discussion thread…. with some links…

Hey Everyone, just noticed this discussion. I will weigh in with my 2 cents about Ignite. As the organizer, I am very happy about how the event turned out and the love and support from all of you. It’s the crowd and the energy that gets this thing “fired up!” I can’t wait for Ignite Raleigh 3 and I want to have it in Spring / Summer 2010 with music acts too - your feed back is welcome and appreciated.

On “Fizzled Durham“…. I am happy to see the spill over enthusiasm for Ignite spread throughout the Triangle! I do wish there was not such a negative tone to the “marketing” of Fizzled since the message seems to imply to the uninitiated that Ignite didn’t have enough capacity or give enough opportunity to the community - when this is the farthest from the truth. We gave 19 people a shot at speaking and well over 80% of those were chosen by the public, but I digress. Words like “ Well if Ignite Raleigh didn’t work out for you, we have Fizzled Durham for you” is just bad for the community. We are all friends. I have been talking to Dan London and want him to succeed and he wants Ignite to succeed. But here’s the thing. We had Global Ignite Week right? We had one of the largest Ignite nights on the planet! Here’s what I am thinking, we could have had “Ignite Durham.” It’s that simple. We would’ve made such a big splash. “huh what - NC is blowing up with 2 Ignites with 1000s of people?!” We missed an opportunity because we didn’t talk to each other and communicate better. I just want us to work together to make the Triangle awesome. Let’s do it together.

On having Ignites for Conferences or Companies. I think this is a great idea. It’s already being done. The Ignite night that inspired me to bring this concept to the Triangle in fact was held as a social activity in conjunction with a huge tech conference in San Francisco called Web2.0 Expo. That is where I met Brady Forrest (one of the co-founders p.s. he’s from Raleigh originally) and I was BLOWN away by the awesome Ignite they had in March 2009. I came right back to Raleigh and that weekend went to Startup Weekend at Edge Office and declared “Wayne, There is this thing called Ignite and we are bringing it to Raleigh.” I have lots of videos of the night on my youtube channel youtube.com/irab and I put others in my playlists. Ignite to me is all about People and Ideas. It is the perfect compliment to any conference and I view this format as very much like the Unconference format of BarCamps. Geeks sharing their passions no matter what they are. Many conferences (like Web2.0 and Enterprise2.0) are now expanding their agenda to include an unconference track of community driven talks as well. This is the future of conferences and events. You vote, you talk, the audience is better for it. For companies, all of the above apply as well. It just takes the right people driving it and the company culture to allow it to bloom and take root. Talk to me more about this. I think I can help.

Lastly, I hope you all will help us make Ignite better. I want feedback on how you all think the community selection process should be improved or if you think it is fine the way it is. Should we add contests for the audience at the event like many Ignite nights host? Are the featured speakers working - or should it be 100% community voting? This event is all about you. Help us help you as Miss NC USA 2010 said in her Ignite Raleigh 2 presentation.

If you have comments for the whole group of people talking, please direct your comments back into the discussion on LinkedIn. Thanks for reading.

TechCrunch guest post by David Sacks, the Founder and CEO of Yammer and Geni.