What is this thing?!

 
5 Minutes of Fame (5MoF) is an adaptation of CCC’s Lightning Talks.  What are those? A set of 5 minute talks crammed into a time chunk of your preferred size, usually 16 talks in 90 minutes or 11 in 60 minutes.  Our implementation is ten talks in an hour, with a short intermission so you can get another beer.
 

Why would I want to see lightning talks in the first place?

 
Because you, like many people these days, fear commitment, and your attention span is too short for any amount of time you can’t count on one hand.   5mof provides fun-sized chunks of science, tech, weirdness, woo, DIY or local projects, and general Noisebridge-related loldongs and whimsical fuckery, for your inner ADHD child.
 

Ok, sounds like a good low-risk time investment. But why would I want to *do* a lightning talk myself, when I could just watch you guys flail around a bit?

 
Lots of reasons!
 
- Perhaps you’re new to public speaking, and want to get your presentation chops up in a relatively safe, low-stakes environment  If you fuck up, hey, its already almost over anyway, and most of the audience are your friends and will be just as drunk as you.  The next talk will be up right away and hopefully will erase their admittedly poor short-term memory.  This is a great way to prepare for speaking at larger conferences, where you have an entire hour to screw up in, and most of the audience are not your friends, although they will be just as drunk as you, and are far more likely to remember any hilarious failures on your part.
 
- Maybe you have a local project, organization, startup, pre-startup idea, or economically-priced nonconformist educational facility you’d like to let the world know about, but you’re willing to settle for letting us know about it.  Tell us about your latest invention, show us your half-done prototype, pass around your only fragile scale model so that guy in the back can drop it on the floor.  Who knows, your next business partner or angel investor could be in our audience, and drunk enough to give you money!
 
- Do you have an important local or global issue that needs more awareness raised, political or otherwise? Shout your cause from the rooftops! (Not ours, it’s against safety code and our lease and put your pants back on, what the hell are you doing? Get out.)
 
- You like to hear yourself talk.  About anything.  Like, bronies. Or Bitcoins.  Or hackable vibrating massage belts you found in your garage.  Or your latest metaphysical theories on the emotional states of various liquids.  Or your Burning Man art piece with the LEDs and fire and naked painted women.  Or Trolling. Stop taking out your weird hobbies on the friends you want to keep, and come get it out of your system with the friends you don’t care that much about.  Preferably with cat/meme/boob pictures.
 
Seriously, anyone can speak at 5mof.  We do limit the number of speakers to ten, so if for some reason we actually get more than ten speakers and can’t accept them all, you can resubmit early for next month!

Sweet, I totally have some totally off the wall shit I’d like to yell at a captive audience for five minutes! Where do I sign up?

 
Glad you asked!  Use our Sign Up Form to register to speak.  After you’re notified of acceptance, please submit your slides no later than 6pm the Wednesday before the event.  Accepted slide formats are: Powerpoint, Keynote, Openoffice, or Google Docs Presentation (make sure we can save your slides).  If you have videos or just need a web browser, or you are planning to use your own laptop, please let us know.  ABSOLUTELY NO: PDFs, word processing documents, or folders of pictures.
 
Talk schedule will be finalized and released at the usual time, you know, shortly after the start of the event.
 

Wait! Where and when is 5mof held, anyway? You see, I have the memory of a goldfish. 

 
5 Minutes of Fame is held at Noisebridge every 3rd Thursday at 8PM. For information on getting to Noisebridge if you’ve never been before see this page.