What would you say if you had just 5 minutes to give a presentation about the Web? You get 20 slides, and each slide lasts just 15 seconds.
If you’re sick of tedious presentations which never get to the point, then come along to Ignite Web, where you’re guaranteed to see short, sharp presentations on interesting and insightful Web topics.
What’s in a name?
The Upcoming Formula 1 GP event in Melbourne has for some time been using the slogan “Melbourne Fires Up”. There was even a huge banner at the Airport greeting visitors. Of course, the terrible events of the last few weeks put paid to that slogan, and banner, which now reads “Melbourne Gears Up”.
With the upcoming “Ignite” event planned for Melbourne, we faced a similar, if not more challenging problem. The problematic term “ignite” was not simply part of a slogan, it was the core brand name. (Ignite is a concept devised by Brady Forrest and Bre Pettis in Seattle during 2006.)
The truth is, despite the events in Victoria of recent weeks, and even some of us being quite involved with fund raising efforts for those affected by the fires, we’ll come clean. It simply didn’t occur to us there would be a problem with the name until very late in the piece.
Were we being terribly insensitive, arrogant, rude bastards? I’d like to hope not. Rather, I think this happened because the name “Ignite” is so central to the whole event, it lost its literal meaning for us - when we said or wrote “Ignite” we did so in capital letters, and thought of the event, not the everyday meaning of the word.
This was particularly unfortunate because Ignite events by tradition are named for the place they are held - for example “Ignite Denver”, “Ignite Sydney” and so on. So, that’s how the name “Ignite Melbourne” came to be. In essence, we were on auto-pilot when it came to naming the event.
Fortunately, late in the piece it dawned on us that this really was not a great name. In fact, it was a terrible name.
So, we were faced with the challenge of renaming the whole event. The question really was, could we keep the term “Ignite” and by associating it with something other than a place, lose the problematic connotations, or was the term “Ignite” in and of itself too central a problem?
To answer this, we turned to folks we know in Victoria, to get a sense of whether a name like “Ignite Web” would work, or whether even such a name would be wrong-footed coming so soon after these events in Victoria.
The response we got from those we asked was that “Ignite Web” would be much less of a concern. In the light of this, coupled with the challenges a complete rename would have entailed, we have made the decision to use the name “Ignite Web”. Because the web is not itself a physical thing, the literal meaning of the word ignite is far less prominent, and the metaphorical sense of energising takes a much more important role.
I do hope we’ve pulled the right rein with the decision, and welcome your thoughts on the comments form.
John Allsopp - Web Directions
