Find Your Community. Or Build It.

(Forgive last night’s post. I was too excited to leave it alone, and too tired to do it right.)

I spoke at IgniteBoulder5 last night. It was my third IgniteBoulder, and my first time presenting a presentation. Ever.

My wife actually put the presentation together for me when she saw what a difficult time I was having with it. Once I had a sound structure in which to work, I ran with it. After about 5 practice sessions and a couple whiskey & cokes, I stepped up on the stage of the Boulder Theater and practiced and preached the very same thing.

The presentation was about finding your community. The presentation was for finding my community. And I have to say: It was a tremendous success! The first two Ignites that I attended, I had conversations with about two people. Last night, I had more than I can count. It was just amazing. And I couldn’t have done it without my lovely and amazing wife.

Since you’re not really able to read all the slides in the video, I’m including those for anyone who wanted to catch a rewind on them.

The experience was completely outrageous. Having been to two IgniteBoulder nights before, I knew that humor was much better received than something straight and dry, and that the relative alcohol content of the Boulder Theater (compared to auditoriums on CU campus) would only add to that truth. Unfortunately, my sense of humor only responds spontaneously, so the presentation wasn’t really funny at all. I was ready to fail miserably. I was equally ready to do fairly well. I absolutely wasn’t prepared to do great, but the response was tremendous. All I can say is Thank You, Boulder!

(@kym818) (@brandonsings)

(top center: @mediamum)

My goals here were three-fold. First, I want people to be honest enough with themselves to see clearly what they need, what their community needs, and what they have to contribute. Second, I want people to be confident and courageous enough to do something about what their honesty teaches them. I don’t actually think I used the word courage in the presentation. I should have. Finally, like I said above, I wanted to practice what I was preaching. After my last two Ignites, I only regretted not striking up some conversations. Third time around, I had to make it happen if it was going to.

And so I did.

(Flickr: Yann Ropars)