‘How to Be Yourself’: My Ignite talk about authenticity

Ignite talks are an exquisite form of self-torture for which you voluntarily stand in front of a crowd and give a five-minute talk timed to twenty slides that advance, inexorably, every 15 seconds.

At the end of last year I gave one of these talks at NewsFoo, and the kind folks who organized that event provided some great video.

My theme was a topic I’ve grown increasingly fascinated by — “reality hunger,” the “authenticity bind,” and the nature of personal identity in the digital age.

Here’s my five minutes:

What’s with the references to RuPaul? At the conference I had the good/bad fortune of immediately following Mark Luckie onstage. Luckie’s talk on “Why RuPaul is Better At Social Media Than You” was way more fabulous than mine could ever be, as you can see:

There’s some great stuff in nearly all of the other Ignite talks from NewsFoo. They’re all here.