Posts Tagged “pecha kucha”

Some time last year, I first learned about Pecha Kucha from the estimable Presentation Zen blog, but it wasn’t until last night that I experienced it.  Pecha Kucha, in a nutshell, is when people get together and share 20-slide presentations in which the slides advance automatically every 20 seconds, for a crisp 6:40 each.  The content of the presentations isn’t specified, only how they are delivered.

It’s generally done as a forum to practice the skill of making and delivering presentations, of focusing ideas and images into a predetermined format.  It’s become a world-wide movement, and the Boston chapter’s sixth Pecha Kucha night was last night at Mantra on Temple Place.  I dragged former colleague and fellow design geek J to the festivities.

The evening was co-sponsored by AIGA, “the professional association for design,” and many AIGA members were in attendance and some presented.

I love the idea of Pecha Kucha.  Creative people getting together and playing a sort of party game.  People getting serious about the craft of presentation.  Using arbitrary constraints to flex your brain and create something, like writing haiku or sonnets.  I didn’t fully know what to expect, and I was surprised on a few counts.

First, 20 seconds can be a long time, and so can 6:40.  At work, I used to budget about a minute per slide.  I now budget less because I’ve gotten better about reducing the amount of information on each slide, but now I have more slides.  At Pecha Kucha, I often found myself impatient for the slide to advance.  Similarly, at work, I’d be thrilled if any presentation lasted only six or seven minutes, but again, some Pecha Kucha presos seemed to drag on.

Second, having every slide up for the same amount of time is strange.  Imagine a film in which every cut or scene was the same length, or a book with every chapter exactly the same size.  I hadn’t given much conscious thought to the rhythm of a presentation, but it’s a powerful thing.

Third, these design types don’t just use fewer words per slide, they use none.  I’m a big fan of words and also of typography, so this threw me for a loop.  Sure, eveybody spoke to their slides, some at great length, but in most cases I felt a little lost when there was no verbal matter on screen.

It was too dark to take notes or decent photos, but some of the presentations that stood out where those by Chris Pullman of WGBH, Denise Korn of Korn Design, and Lisa Williams of Placeblogger.

Pullman was the lead off presenter and his talk was a capsule history of WGBH’s new building and the giant video screen thereon. His timing on the 20-second transitions was impressive, and as you migth expect of somebody working in TV or radio, he told a story with a beginning, a middle and an end.

Denise Korn presented another story, this one about a summer intership program she launched called Youth Design Boston.  Showing images almost entirely of the teens in the program and their work, Korn played perfectly to the audience of design professionals, most of whom were probably told as youths, as J put it, “you’ll never make any money drawing!”

She mentioned that one YDB project is a redesign of the MBTA’s Charlie Card being pitched to the mayor’s office.  I’m glad I’m not the only one who finds that Charlie character a bit creepy and maybe not the only who who feels some nostalgia for the colorful and ever-changing oldstyle magnetic strip MBTA fare cards.

Finally, I have to mention Lisa Williams’ presentation, a pitch of sorts for her company placeblogger.  Honestly, I was expecting more like this – a mix of text and image in the service of pitching a company.  But around the third slide, Williams declared that the slides had been rearranged out of order and the rest of the presentation was a bit of live improv or a game of battledecks.

Some of the other presentations were more like narrated slideshows of the presenter’s work or work he liked, and a couple were downright bad, with bad timing, monotone script-reading and overfull slides. On the other hand, the better presenters told engaging or even inspiring stories despite the restrictions of the format.

I’m very glad I went.  I think I learned a couple of things that might be useful in my own presenting, and oddly, I find myself itching to try for a slot in a future Pecha Kucha night.  Presentation topic ideas, anybody?

At the end of his Podcamp Boston presentation on distributed microblogging this Sunday, Joe Cascio declared, “that’s where I ran out of Schlitz.” The phrase caught on and was swiftly tweeted and favorited, and I wonder if it’s not a good summation of the weekend’s events and maybe even of the state of social media.

Don’t get me wrong. Podcamp was a fantastic weekend. Excellent networking, fun people, a great, open collaborative and supportive atmosphere, free parking, free wifi, quality presentations and presenters. Kudos to the organizers and sponsors and attendees. I am seriously looking forward to future podcamps. But…

The Schlitz was good. The Schlitz was cheap, sometimes even free. We drank a lot of it and caught a pretty good buzz. We made lots of cool new friends under its lubricating influence. But now what?

There’s growing evidence that we have a social media bubble. Heck, it made the cover of the MIT Tech review. When your cool online New Way To Be gets called bubbly by the Tech Review – in print, no less – it’s time to ask yourself the tough questions. People are building businesses around Twitter, but Twitter doesn’t have its own revenue model yet.

I’m no retrograder here, I don’t question that most examples of most forms of marketing have been sucking the fumes from their empty Schlitz cans for ages. Even the cuddly darlings of search marketing are overbid to absurdity. So my point is not to hide and hate and fear the social media revolution and try to return to simpler times, but to ask, is there really any there there? And if not, how can we make some?

If I could answer that, I wouldn’t be blogging from a Starbucks, I’ll tell you that. So instead of answers, here are five more questions and issues prodded by podcamp and the discussions I had there.

1. Personal branding, privacy and publicity

During CC Chapman’s packed session, “building your brand through passion and community,” the discussion quickly turned to online privacy, widely described as illusory. A wise audience member piped up, “Most of us are here to get known, not to get unknown.” Amen, brother. As long as you have some idea of what you’re getting into, you can make smart choices. For most folks, being stalked is not that likely because they’re just not that famous.

Another podcamper was a little too quick to confide in me that the #1 google result for her name was about her “boobies.” I don’t think she helped her case by removing the photo, which was apparently not nearly as scandalous as the text left behind suggested. If you clicked that link, you deserve to be Rickrolled, but that’s the best I could do. If you want to work in online PR, you’ve got to be able to use the online chatter about your bits to your advantage. Don’t apologize if you haven’t actually done anything wrong, it makes you look twice as guilty.

The conference was packed with digital recording devices and people wearing nametags. Not a recipe for stealth if you told your spouse that you were somewhere else that weekend. Some photographers asked permission and some didn’t. Lots of good questions there about who owns those images and sounds. If you took my picture – probably because you thought my shirt was the coolest or dumbest one you saw all day – please tag it “limeduck” that’s all my personal brand asks.

2. Pecha Kucha vs Battledecks

These two items were on the agenda a couple of times, but I never managed to catch up with them. I’m not even really sure they happened at all. But they make an instructive pair.

Pecha Kucha is a poetry-slam style event where you bring a 20-slide presentation which is advanced every 20 seconds automatically. You present to it and get rated by the crowd.

Battledecks is PPT-backed improv. You go on stage and present a set of slides you’ve never seen before.

Hyper-prepared presentation, or surrealist improvisation – which would you rather do, and which should be a required part of business education?

3. What’s up with Moo cards?

Heck, what’s up with business cards of any kind in this digital age? I’ll rant later about what I think of Moo minicards. More broadly, what goes on a business card and what doesn’t? Website, blog, facebook, myspace, email address, twitter handle, skype name, phone number, latitude and longitude, t-shirt size, maybe even something about what you do? I just wrote @limeduck on some nice cardstock or Japanese paper.

4. Two takes on TangySlice

Speaking of social media overload, I told some people about my friend TangySlice and his “quest for social media greatness” wherein he intends to sign up for 100 social sites in 30 days. He’s almost there, and I think he will achieve his goal, but check out this gamut of reactions:

• [blink] [blink] Why?
• Well, if he wants to waste his time, better him than me.
• A hundred sites? Bah, I have at least 150 already!

Which type are you? Which type was more common at podcamp? Discuss. Then donate to TangySlice’s fundraising page. You can donate a dollar per site in your social media portfolio. It’s for a good cause.

5. Fuck the skeptics

There’s a real risk of groupthink at these events. Where were the doubters and curmudgeons? The people who showed a slide titled “what the f**k is social media” didn’t go too far enough, and when I asked them about the doubters, they said “fuck the skeptics!” To be fair, they were kidding, but I still want more and better dissent. It keeps us thinking. It keeps us honest.

Quack you later.