Good Wine And Even Better Ideas

This past Thursday I found a used English bookstore and café just a short walk away from my apartment in a really cozy area of the city, and not only did I find a really great book, but I also stumbled across a flyer for an event called 'Ignite Budapest’ that was happening there that evening. The expat event featured about a dozen individuals from various creative backgrounds, who each had about 5 minutes to give a mini lecture on their topic par excellence. The owner of the bookstore assure me that it was going to be great and the evening turned out to be nothing short of what he promised.

After listening to some really interesting thoughts and ideas, everyone was given the chance to talk to the speakers as the venue opened up its bar, and I took every advantage of this opportunity to pick the brains of my three favourite:

Tibor Kocsis - really cool Central European documentary film director. Right now he's working on a film called "The New Eldorado" about how the Canadian (shame) gold corporation is planning on destroying a huge mountain range in Romania to create one of the biggest gold mines in Europe. Over 5 000 people live in this area of Romania and will be "re-located" if all the plans go through.

Patrick Judson - DJ from New York and I can't even think of how I should describe him. His masters thesis was on DJ culture and postmodernism, and his discussion was all about how electronic music and the space where people collectively dance to it has like a shamanistic power that connects and brings us closer to each other and the technology that actually disconnected us in the first place? ....it was intense.

David Erickson - freelance photographer. His photos were absolutely amazing and in only 5 minutes he shared some of the best advice I've ever heard about how even someone with absolutely no experience can take beautiful pictures.