Erica undergoing a brief moment of Muppetface

Last week I spoke at OSCON Ignite, the evening entertainment bit of the O’Reilly Open Source Conference and the Google Awards.

Talks took the traditional Ignite format of five minutes, 20 slides. Slides auto-advance after 15 seconds, ready or not.

Speakers were encouraged to address their personal brand of geekery. I chose to talk about the Librarian Avengers Film Rating System, which addresses some movie metadata I’d like to see. Things like “This film contains a Creepy child Singing” and “Warning! Sylvester Stallone!”

OSCON Ignite is online at blip.tv here

My bit starts around (44:45), but stick around for the whole thing. Make sure to check out Kirrily’s talk on Geeky Things you can Do with Textiles, and Liz Henry talking about the barriers to wheelchair hacking.

The format kept everyone pithy, and although I had to speak before the amazing Damian Conway, I didn’t throw up from stage fright once!

I went to see Children of Men today, which was fantastic, disturbing, hopeful, and cautionary. I cried a bit, but left not resenting the movie for making me sad.

Beforehand, we saw four trailers which ALL fell into the new Librarian Avengers Film Rating System. There was a Creepy Child Singing, Two Overly Patriotics, and a Jim
Carrey.

Beware.

Movie ratings suck. “Rated R” doesn’t tell me anything I need to know.
I need to know if a movie contains cannibalism, synthesizers, or Jim Carrey.

I need a rating system that reflects the diversity of obstacles lurking in today’s cinema. Introducing…

	Rated A for Animal Gets Hurt
	Rated B for British Accent Faked by American
	Rated C for Creepy Child Singing
	Rated D for Dialog Written by Committee
	Rated E for Escape-in-front-of-a-fireball
	Rated F for Fun-filled Frolic for the Family
	Rated G for Grab-my-hand!
	Rated H for Heads chopped off/Hearts pulled out
	Rated I for Italian Stallion
	Rated J for Jim Carrey
	Rated K for Keyboard hacks Pentagon in two clicks
	Rated L for Lead Actors involved in Real-Life Romance rendering film unwatchable
	Rated M for Motiveless Villain
	Rated N for Natives
	Rated O for Overly Patriotic
	Rated P for Pacino Yelling
	Rated R for Remake of a Better Film
	Rated S for Scientific Content ≠ Reality
	Rated T for T&A
	Rated U for Un-ironic 80’s Soundtrack
	Rated V for Vehicle
	Rated W for Woody Allen as Romantic Lead
	Rated X for Xenu-Sponsored Script
	Rated Z for Zombies