Ignite Sydney is one of my favourite events. A carefully crafted selection of speakers each year stand up in front of a sold out crowd and give a 5 minute presentation on a topic of their choice. The catch? Their slides must advance every 15 seconds. No going over time. No rambling on. No reading of bullet points off a screen. Just a fast paced, super fun night!

This year I got the enormously huge privilege of presenting at Ignite Sydney. Everyone expected me to talk about technology and the web, so I instead proposed something completely different.

I present to you, freshly picked from YouTube, “A guy’s guide to the foreign world of cosmetics”:

(Many thanks to Hunting with Pixels for recording the event so professionally and getting it up on YouTube super fast… they’re really great guys too!)

Thanks

1. Stephen Lead is a legend for running this event voluntarily every year! Thank you Steve
2. Thanks to Angela McDougall from Presentation Studio as well, she was our presentation guru and gave a bunch of tips.
3. Thank you so much to the beautiful Meri for being a model in the preso and supporting me throughout it all… I’m forever grateful to have you in my life.
4. Thanks to every friend at HotHouse who came along to cheer me on, you guys are incredible.
5. Thanks to all the lovely people who said hi afterwards, it was a pleasure meeting you all! Hope to see you all around soon
6. Thank you to every other presenter at Ignite who provided feedback and kind words! A big thank you to Michael Kordahi for just being the inspiration he is.

Looking for the other presentations?
If you’re interested in seeing the rest of the night, here’s the YouTube playlist – Ignite Sydney 9

Other perspectives
You can read a few other presenters’ takes on the event too:

1. Tim Buesing
2. Roger Lawrence
3. Michael Kordahi

Bonus feature
Also as promised, here is one of my slides as a desktop background:

(If you want other sizes, just ask!)