Ignite talks are 5-minute long speeches given at conferences, events, etc. that showcase bleeding-edge projects. They are lightning-fast and are meant to excite and energize an audience about a specific topic. For more information, check out these links:

• Ignite how-to: http://igniteshow.com/howto
• An example talk: http://youtu.be/rRa1IPkBFbg

Below are the ignite talks we currently have planned for this year’s conference.

Designing for Emergence

Jonathan Lamb
Principal User Experience Designer
The Nerdery

In both game and user experience design we want to affect our audience in purposeful ways. In contrast to delivering a traditional narrative or rhetoric, we design for audiences who build meaning through their decisions and actions. How do we convey a deliberate experience for an audience who selectively views, ignores, and manipulates components in an unpredictable order?

Three Ontological Provocations

Brian J. McNely, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies
University of Kentucky

How do users of everyday technologies and documentation see the world? More specifically, how do users of the same everyday technologies and documentation see the world differently, and why? We live among multiple, crosshatched, and sometimes conflicting ontologies. This talk offers three concise provocations for thinking about everyday communication design in a crosshatched world.

Designing Global Persuasion: Using Graph Theory to Mine Social Data

Ryan Omizo
Visiting Assistant Professor of Professional Writing
Michigan State University

With the push to theorize and commercialize global patterns of interaction on the social web, social network analysis and its tools have garnered renewed interest, and with good reason. Social networking analysis provides researchers with metrics that can help quantify and visualize what are often ephemeral interactions and messy data. Much of the work done in this area focus on networks constituted by individual actors and their ties. This talk offers a new model of network interaction–one that examines the words and persuasive strategies adopted throughout online conversations as network constituents–and proposes new directions in the design of social media research.

Carrots, Sticks, and Other Tricks for Improving Behavior in Online Communities

Quinn Warnick, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Digital Rhetoric
Virginia Tech

In online communities, it doesn’t matter if people are talking about politics or pets, one thing is certain: some people will behave badly. But what can be done to minimize bad behavior and foster civil discourse? Drawing on innovative approaches used in several online communities, this talk will explore both social and technological solutions to some common problems faced by community managers.

Simplifying Collaboration on the Job (Or, a researcher, a designer, a developer, and a content strategist walk into a project meeting….)

Clare Cotugno, Ph.D.
Practice Lead, Content Strategy
Electronic Ink, Philadelphia PA

It’s all well and good to tell our clients they need a holistic, interdisciplinary communication solution, but do we have the chops to practice what we preach within the project team? I bring you tidings from the trenches of a design consultancy. I’ll share lessons learned, some rules of thumb, and some thoughts for the classroom so we can bring more expertise and less ego to the practice of design.