How I became an IGNITER

By Inigo Lopez, CEO – BiCortex Languages & Translations

For those who don’t know what an Ignite presentation is, please read this carefully: an Ignite presentation is an activity in which each presenter has exactly five minutes to present on the basis of 20 slides that move automatically every 15 seconds.

The biggest challenge is to mention the right things to match each slide. If you speak too fast, you may have an uncomfortable silence while you wait for your next slide to come. If you speak too slow, the next slide will appear, and what you are saying won’t have anything to do with the slide. It is indeed a challenge. The perfect recipe for putting yourself out of your comfort zone.

The Ignite session has always been my favorite one of the EuRA conference. I decided I was going to give it a try at the recent EuRA conference in Dublin. The first challenge was to decide the subject of my Ignite session. Speakers at past conferences usually spoke about something related to work or to our industry, about how to improve doing business, about their life or a personal situation. I could have easily chosen a subject that brings together both my work and my personal life, that was fun and easy for me to present: my “holiwork” trips with my family in a campervan. However, as this was about getting out of my comfort zone, I pushed that to the limit, and I decided to speak about something that is not easy at all and in fact very emotional for me: my trip to the Ukrainian border to support Ukrainians.

Preparing my slides and my speech was hard. I had to go deep in my mind to get the memories of that 2022 trip. I had to check all the pictures of the trip, and select the ones that I wanted to use for the session. Every time I worked on this, I ended up in tears. Was I going to be able to actually deliver the presentation without being an emotional wreck? What might happen if I cried during the presentation? I asked these questions to myself, and also to

Michele Bramstoft and Peggy Love, who were very kind and professional in their guidance of me during the whole process. The good thing about Ignite is that you have to prepare it very well, and you have to rehearse many times. That means that my speech became less and less natural, and I knew it by heart. I was going to be fine. No chances of crying during the presentation.

Michele organised a rehearsal during the conference that took place the day before the session, and included all eight of the Igniters. Honestly, I did it perfectly, if I may say so myself! No mistakes, no shaking and no crying.

Then the REAL Ignite session took place. I was very confident. I started the presentation