Beginning as a small brushfire in Seattle in 2006, Ignite has become a wildfire that original sponsors at O’Reilly Media and Make Magazine could have only guessed at. Who knew that five-minute PowerPoint presentations on speakers’ passions would become such a hot topic? Since then, other cities have taken the torch of this spontaneous combustion of ideas, and local software developers Jesse Harding and Andrew Shafer have organized events in Salt Lake City.

The first week of March, in more than 50 cities across the world—from Munich to Salt Lake City to Sydney—it’s “Global Ignite Week.” Salt Lake City’s version includes typically eccentric and “geekcentric” presentations. Jason Vance’s “15 Things to Remember When Dating in a Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Environment” is par for the course. But some of the 18 listed have a decidedly Utah flavor, like Robert V. Bolton’s “Utah Culture Shock, or: Why I Gave Up Everything I Know and Love to Move to this Frozen Waste Land.”

Ignite SLC 4 @ The State Room, 638 S. State, 801-501-2885, Thursday, March 4, 6-10 p.m.

For more information, go to http://www.ignitesaltlake.com.