I have been invited to present a talk at Ignite Baltimore 16 on October 18, 2012. The event will be held at MICA’s Brown Center in central Baltimore City just a couple blocks from Penn Station.
I’m particularly excited about this since the last couple Ignite shows have been quite good. The spirit is similar to that of TED Talks with three important differences. First, each speaker is given only 5 minutes, not 10 to 17. Second, each speaker brings a set of 20 slides that flip every 15 seconds. This keeps the pace nice and crisp. Third, there are 16 speakers with a wine intermission after the first 8. Speakers are allowed to present on anything they want, so the night is usually a fun potpourri.
Tickets sell out really quickly since they cost almost nothing, so if you’re interested in coming, purchase them now. I hope all of you can come!
The Ignite team accepted my proposal for a talked entitled “The Summer of Punk”. Here’s that proposal now.
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Despite a reputation for being “fake”, the complex and politically charged world of professional wrestling routinely blurs the line between fiction and reality, sometimes with spectacular consequences.
In June 2011 the talented but underutilized WWE wrestler CM Punk was weeks away from the expiration of his contract. Tired of his company’s cartoonish presentation of wrestling, with a live microphone and nothing left to lose, Punk abandoned his script. He broke the fourth wall and spoke directly to the audience, castigating WWE’s creative direction, its management and even wishing death upon its CEO. A panicked production room cut his feed. Punk was suspended.
The event ignited a firestorm of support from fans who endorsed Punk’s “real life” vision of wrestling, leaving WWE with a catch-22 – stick to the “story” and alienate a large, vocal portion of their fan base or acknowledge the legitimacy of Punk’s claims and spark a very real battle for the soul of the sport itself.
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