I dropped by the first Ignite Phoenix event last night (it was Kiry's birthday, so no way could I stay for the whole thing). Really interesting motif: Random speakers, random topics, 5 minutes, 20 slides, exactly 15 seconds per slide, go! Apparently Ignite is something that O'Reilly started a while ago, but this is the first time it has appeared in Phoenix. There were about 100 people in the room (at Jobing.com on the 2nd floor of the NetPro building, which was nice), and apparently about 40 more watching the video stream. The two talks I saw were interesting and pretty well done: a perspective on human vs. geologic time scales, and a discussion of the diversity of peanut butter & jelly sandwich styles (I am not making this up). If the remaining talks were as well done as the first two, then I would say I was impressed.
The population was largely 20-to-30-somethings, most with a tech bent as near as I could tell, although the woman sitting next to me was in PR/marketing. The point? I'm not entirely sure... networking, conversation, thought-provocation, hanging with some interesting people (and I guess drinking at the Half Moon afterwards).
Congrats to the Ignite for pulling off a fine event. I'll definitely participate in the next one.