Acronym

This is a guest post written by Jeffrey Cufaude from Idea Architects. Note: The photo was inserted by Scott Briscoe and is of Cufaude delivering an Ignite session at ASAE's 2011 Annual Meeting & Exposition.

While many sessions were standing room only, Monday afternoon's IGNITE sessions had to be pushing the fire code limit, appropriate given the name of this interesting learning format.

IGNITE is one of two timed presentation formats being used on the worldwide stage. Pecha Kucha, the first, features presentations of 20 slides displaying for 20 seconds each. IGNITE offers a slight variation, 20 slides for 15 seconds each. IGNITE or Pecha Kucha nights are regularly held in cities around the world, often in an informal club-like setting, and frequently featuring presentations focused on a particular issue or question.

They were clearly a hit at ASAE11. Here are a few reasons why and how you might leverage the same concepts for your own future programming.

They're different. Different isn't always better, but there's something to be said for variety particularly when conferences have fairly rigid and standardized sessions.

They engage fresh voices and familiar voices in new ways. Many of the people doing IGNITE talks are folks I've never seen on the conference program before. It's always great to hear new voices, but IGNITE is also a great place for more regular presenters to show other sides of themselves and their interests.

They're short. Where most sessions offer entrée-sized content, IGNITE is a buffet of appetizers. You get to sample a lot in a short period of time, and if you find an individual talk unappealing, it will be over in a few minutes.

They're unpredictable. Given the constraints of the format and the pressure on the presenters, there is an air of uncertainty about how well everything will go. It feels live, unedited, and you half expect a panel of judges to be giving feedback after each presentation. This creates a high level of energy in the room (from both the participants and the presenters).

The content can be more personal. IGNITE and Pecha Kucha can easily be done on professional topics (case studies and show and tell work very well in the formats), but they also are well-suited to personal stories. Where a conference might not do a track of personal development topics, one round of IGNITE sessions can address important personal issues to the professional development of your participants.

There was already buzz. IGNITE debuted for ASAE at the Great Ideas Conference earlier this year (along with a sneak peak session at DC's Busboys and Poets). People liked them there and talked them up in St. Louis. And many of the presenters in St. Louis have built-in followings of friends and colleagues who came to cheer them on. In addition, videos of the Great Ideas IGNITE talks have been watched online so a built-in audience had been cultivated for Annual.

So do consider how you can use the full IGNITE or Pecha Kucha formats in your own organization's learning experiences. But more importantly, take the lessons of why it worked in St. Louis and turn them into questions to share your future conferences: How can you engage fresh voices and familiar voices in new ways? How can you vary session length to build energy? What pilot opportunity might help build buzz for a more mainstage rollout?