Last night ENTS hosted an event called Lightning Thoughts, an opportunity to share and discuss something inspiring or even just interesting. Each presenter got 5 minutes, followed by a few minutes for questions, though those rules weren’t strictly enforced (it was a pretty casual atmosphere). About 15 people showed up, which is a decent turnout for the first event (ENTS hopes to do it again next month).
There was a really wide variety of things shown, but here are a few:
- Ben showed us Swoopo, which is an interesting “entertainment shopping” service. It’s kind of like an auction service, except that you buy bids. It’s a bit shady, really.
- Eric shared Netvibes, Dropbox, and Delicious. He uses the services, along with Google Apps, to run his portable office. My usage of Delicious has dropped lately thanks to the new “Note in Reader” feature at Google Reader, but I use Dropbox all the time, it’s great.
- Keith brought his Amazon Kindle 2 and passed it around. I was really blown away by it actually, seeing it in person really makes a difference.
- Devin showed us Prezi, an awesome Flash-based presentation tool. I’ve seen Devin use it before, but I still haven’t tried it for myself. I must!
Finally, I really enjoyed this inspiring video that Grant shared:
Kudos to Eugene for getting the event off the ground – looking forward to the next one!
MasterMaq's Blog 
Great video. Really, really inspiring. Thanks for sharing.
Good summary of the night; Prezi was definitely an awesome looking tool. I love its spatial concept and doing away with the shackles of linearity.
I blogged about my relationship to my Kindle a while back, if anyone is still on the fence about the awesomeness of e-readers: http://blog.nezroy.com/2010/01/kindle-seduced-me.html
Like Keith said: good summary of the night. Thanks for dropping by Mack, and we’ll look to continue on the event.