Members’ Stories on Fire by ‘Ignite’ Presentations

By Janet Dodrill

Presenting in the Ignite-style

During our last meeting of Cleveland Digital Publishing Users Group (CDPUG), we held our 6th annual CDPUG May Show, where members display their professional work. The group, a non-profit organization dedicated to education and professional development for digital publishers (including graphic designers, web designers, photographers, and writers) in its 23rd year, has a dedicated volunteer staff and board.

This year member presentations left behind tables of printed brochures and portfolios, and laptops running slide shows to a trendy and popular Ignite format (www.igniteshow.com). The website explains the structure of stand-up presentations on a big screen of 20 slides per person with 15 seconds of talking time per slide, for a total of 5 minutes time. Recommended application formats were PowerPoint, Keynote, or Acrobat PDF (for which I created mine using Adobe Bridge, exporting to PDF). There are many interesting videos on the website to view and enjoy, and they were a big help in preparing.

I participated, and rather than giving a standard portfolio show, I presented ‘a year in my life’ which included my basic education and passions, challenges and obstacles overcome with the poor economy, benefits of networking and newly acquired clients for my sole proprietorship freelance graphic and web design business, recent interests and achievements including creating fine art works and displaying and selling it, and current projects I am working on. The time went quickly.

Each individual had an interesting spin to their show, and though the Ignite format was strict, it allowed each member to be creative and tell a story which was entertaining and enlightening. It was a success and I hope we continue to use Ignite in the future.

(Photo by Henry Lee)