Last night we went to the second Ignite Wellington event – the first being the night before we left Wellington for New York back in March.

The aim of the evening is to get people enthusiastic about Wellington and about possibilities – people get up on stage and speak for exactly 5 minutes to exactly 20 slides. No matter their profession, their talk can be about that or some experience they’ve had or some random interest they have.

Last night’s event was great, and I rate it better than the first. People spoke about everything from starting their own company to selling real estate on the moon to outdoor graffiti knitting to wallpaper to game design. You can see the full list of speakers on the Ignite Wellington website plus a video of each talk.

In the talk about graffiti knitting there was a slide of the tree cozies and you can see the one I knitted!

I wrote down one thing from each speech – not necessarily something that sums up the presentation, but just something I liked or remembered.

• Tell your kids that Santa’s not real before it’s too late.
• Wellington has a leisure culture.
• Wellington has some ugly public spaces.
• Luck is an important factor between success and failure.
• Do something to stimulate your grey matter.
• I never want to finish the boat or I’ll have to find another expensive dream.
• I skate through life on a thin veneer of knowledge.
• If you’ve got a round logo then we’re working with you.
• Wallpaper is for every day, it’s not saved for best like the good dinner set.
• I’ve made a list of 101 things to do in 1001 days.
• Intellectual property is not just an idea, it has to have a place in the real world.
• Moon, Mars and Venus are the most popular locations for extra-terrestrial real estate.
• Our lives are lived in boxes and we experiment and play to learn the limits.

The next Ignite Wellington will be in another 6 months or so, open to anyone to speak or attend so go along for some thought provoking stuff.