The Flare-Up has Begun

Thursday, April 22, 2010 was a historic day. It marked the first Flare-Up, held at the Grand Traverse Pie Company in East Lansing, Michigan, and, in an appropriate Earth Day choice, focused on Michigan State University's Green Graduation.

So, what the heck is a Flare-Up and why does it matter?

For those of you familiar with today's technology environment we say "Flare-Up: not quite an IGNITE! but it Might."  We had talked about the possibility of having an Ignite with a focus on the University and its community. We realized that too many good things are going on within that environment that people just don't get a chance to learn about. We needed a vehicle for enabling that. Ignite! seemed like a good option. The only problem was none of us involved in deciding that Ignite was a good idea had the time to make it happen. We decided something on a smaller scale would be better.

So we created "Flare-Up: not quite an IGNITE! but it might."  A Flare-up is promoted on Twitter. It is held somewhere where a group can gather informally and where participants can purchase coffee, soda, and other drinks and morning food (The first one was held at the Grand Traverse Pie Company in East Lansing, Michigan, a place where we have been meeting informally for PIE-Ups for quite a while.) A person we want to learn from is invited to present.  They have five minutes and can bring one prop. Questions and discussion after the presentation can go where it leads.

Our other goal is to make all the presentations available on YouTube. Finding an available name resulted in our channel being called "pieupflareup" channel. Here is our first video.  We have a bit to learn about videography - like don't put your presenter in the sunlight - but you get the idea of where we are going. Jennifer Battle, from the MSU Office of Sustainability, talked about the Green Graduation. Her prop was the green gown and cap made out of recycled pop bottles. Sweet! You'll see that Dr. Lou Anna Simon, president of MSU and her husband even dropped in to see what was going on. How cool is that!

I guess we felt good enough about it that we plan to keep going. We believe that ideas sometimes creep out of the most unexpected cracks and can propel new ideas and new directions. So we'll keep searching the cracks and finding new things to learn more about. When we do we'll send out the Tweets and hold another Flare-Up. Because the ideas we find are not quite IGNITES! but they might!