In Service, The Series - Ignite Guelph

Yes, I give a lot of my time, so I need to make a series of posts to talk about the groups and events I volunteer with.

Yesterday I wrote a bit about Lunch Up Guelph again to start introducing this series, so we will call Lunch Up Service One.

Service Two (these aren't in any order, except maybe the order I'm taking part in them this week) is Ignite Guelph.

I teased about Ignite yesterday, in fact that afternoon I had planned it to be my blog post for the day until I realized I couldn't tell the back story without figuring out how I knew the rest of the people involved.

Through Lunch Up Guelph, and the Twitters, I became good friends with Sean Yo, who has this ability to suggest great ideas and then find a bunch of people to execute them. He would make a fabulous Volunteer Coordinator, and if he isn't careful I'm going to put his name forward for the role with another group I work with.

Because we are both busy people a lot of great ideas have come and gone between us because we just didn't have the manpower to make them happen. Luckily Sean was already part of a small group of people here in Guelph trying to bring a very cool event to our city. Ignite is a worldwide, volunteer run speaker series. Waterloo has been hosting them for a few years, as well as Toronto and London.

But as we know, here in Guelph we are a little different. Sure there are some great speakers and interesting topics covered in Waterloo, London and Toronto, but we like our entertainment a little more homegrown here.

There was already a team of about 6 or 8 people involved when Sean asked me to join. It's easy to say yes when there are a bunch of fun, reliable and competent people already on board.

We held our first event last spring, in April and had such a great time we dove right into the next one, which we held in October and already we are planning number three for March 11.

I also spoke at the first one, and while I loved talking I kind of wish I hadn't jumped the gun and could have enjoyed a few other talks before giving my own.

However, I will definitely tell you that giving an Ignite talk was the most exhilarating thing I can remember doing since I last was at Canada's Wonderland. I can't urge you enough, dear reader, if you have a topic you are passionate about you should consider getting up there and sharing your passion. Art, music, food, running, beer, energy, travel, fair trade and wages, we all have something we think will make the world a better place if everyone only understands how amazing it is. Tell us, change our world.