Ignite format

A timed talk format: twenty slides, each advancing automatically after fifteen seconds, for a total of five minutes. The speaker cannot slow down, cannot go long, and has no presenter notes. It sounds punishing and works as a kindness, because the constraint carries a first time speaker through and the pace gives a program a fast, funny stretch that a longer talk cannot produce. Running it well means collecting slides in advance, playing them from one dedicated machine rather than the presenter’s laptop, and reminding presenters on the day that the deck will move without them.

Source: The DevOpsDays Organizing Guide, which builds ignites into its recommended program shape (“a set of several ignite talks: 5 minute talks with 20 slides that auto-advance”) and publishes practical running notes plus a dedicated Ignite format page. The format itself predates DevOpsDays and comes from the Ignite events series; DevOpsDays is the source this course uses because it documents running one at community-conference scale.

First used in: 2.5 · Program design: the show people remember.