We had a record turnout last night for the first O'Reilly Ignite meetup in the North here at Old Broadcasting House in Leeds.  All in all 200 people came through the door for this event and the opening night of the art exhibition.

The format  was fast paced with 20 five minute talks on a broad range of topics related to technology. This was a great combination of networking, learning, debate and even comedy.

Ignite offers the opportunity to 'spark' a chain reaction of ideas by spending five minutes on stage talking about a project you are passionate about in today's digital and creative sector. Speakers have 20 slides which rotate automatically after 15 seconds.  Our favourites were Katy Lips on developing iPhone app Coffee Buzz, (but we do need to declare an interest as Katy is back today delivering the Amazing iPhone course here at nti), FriiSpray and Dominic Hodgson, also Dean Vipond's ode to the design of the Boots paracetamol tablets packet. Dean proposed this as an example of perfect design, if such a thing exists!  Check out the meetup site for comments from the people who came.

It was a pleasure to have the oppportunity to host this amazing event, we hope that its not a one-off and that we can work with Imran from Carbon Imagineering and Craig from O'Reilly to do this again.