Ignite Waterloo

Yesterday, I got a chance to go to Ignite Waterloo 6, a community event where people give 5 minute talks on topics they're passionate about.

As always, it was an excellent event. It's fun to see some of the same faces at all the community events in Waterloo.

There were some notable talks. Cate Huston gave a talk entitled "Why Do Programmers Have to Lie to Get Dates?", where she claimed software developers have a communication problem that we need to address. There is a lot of confusion about what software developers actually do, and it leads to some interesting questions like "So you work for the internet?". If we figure out how to communicate better, not only will be create better software, but people will understand what we actually do. :P

Syd Bolton talked about cool uses of old computers. He is one of the founders of The Personal Computer Museum.

Bob Rushby, ex-CTO of Christie Digital, gave a talk on the how the future will be full of pixels. He imagined a world where everything analog will be replaced with something digital. Cool stuff.

Ben Brown gave an interesting talk about getting rid of all road signs. Apparently some places in Europe have done this with great success. I'm not convinced that this would work in Canada, especially in larger cities.

Steven Scott debunked the "I've got nothing to hide" argument on Privacy. Also an interesting discussion.

To finish the night, my good friend Amal Isaac gave a great talk on The Technological Singularity. He talked about an interesting future when, inevitably, computers surpass our intelligence.

All-in-all, it was another great event in the KW community! :)