I had the pleasure of attending the first ever Ignite Portland event last month. For the uninitiated, Ignite events consist of set of short, fast paced, presentations on everything from Twitter to unicycling.  From the Oreilly site:

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers.

If you missed the first event, the next one is just around the corner.  Be sure to check it out.

UPDATE

I had the pleasure of attending Ignite at the Bagdad Theater last night. Over a 1000 people showed up for the event after it received considerable coverage, including in the Oregonian, and several hundred had to be turned away at the door. The overall atmosphere was bubbling with creative energy and anticipation. Some of the presentations touched on a "why Portland, why now" theme, and being at this event drove home the answers to those questions for me. I count my blessings every day that I can live in Portland, with my family, as a part of this community. Presentations can be seen below in the embedded Splashcast (PDX company) player, posted by a devoted fan, LinuxAid.