Ignite Seattle has been the best tech-ish crowd startup gathering in Seattle as far as I’m concerned. The crowd is big but the event is still somewhat intimate. It highlights some of the positives of having a smaller tech community in Seattle relative to Silicon Valley for example.

Brady does a good job pulling together speakers, and this time he has some good ones (other than me of course – I’ll let you be the judge on my talk). Here are the ones I’m particularly looking forward to:

• Jamie Gower — How to Set Up a Machinima Studio for $20 (or Hamlet: Armed and Dangerous)
  The startling true story of the production of the climax from Hamlet that defied sanity—staged entirely in Starcraft: Brood War, a deeply-discounted, 11-year old computer game!
• Dawn Rutherford — Public Library Hacking
  Money tight? Want to save more for a rainy day? If you aren’t fully utilizing your public library, you might be wasting thousands of dollars a year!Librarian Dawn Rutherford will give you a quick trip through all your public libraries have to offer, and how to make the most of it, using tricks and tips gleaned from someone who has spent over half her life working or volunteering in them.
• Scott Berkun — How and Why to Give an Ignite Talk
  To give a good talk you want to have a story. You have to be able to frame it. If you’re going to give an Ignite talk you have to do this really, really quickly.
• Scotto Moore — Intangible Method
  A digital fairy tale about a young woman who realizes that first person video footage from her own life is being posted to YouTube – before the events actually occur in real life.

My talk will be Lego-related.

• The Secret Underground World of Lego — Get a glimpse of a thriving user generated content ecosystem that’s been around since long before the web. See an incredible example of a community, and how a large corporation has completely let go of control only to find incredible success despite and maybe because of the economic downturn.

More details on next week’s event (including the complete list of speakers) on the Ignite Seattle site.