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Do the Pecha-Kucha!

What is it with Japanese words that instantly grab my attention and turn it into an ‘Otaku’. One of my most recent discoveries is the ‘Pecha-Kucha’.

Pecha-Kucha (pronounced ‘peh-chak-cha’ as far as I was able to trace) is the Japanese sound of an ‘informal conversation’ or chatter, something like the English ‘chit-chat’. It was originally invented by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham, two architects in Tokyo who opened up a performance space for young designers to meet, network and present their work.

In order to keep the presentations interesting and control the architects and designers tendency to talk endlessly about their own work, they imposed a set of rules on the presentations.

The format is easy enough. Each presentation could only have 20 slides, and you could only spend 20 seconds (exactly 20) per slide to explain the story of the picture. That’s it.

The ‘rapid-fire’ presentation style, the Pecha-Kucha, has spread virally amongst creatives and is renowned for its ability to capture an audience throughout a large number of consecutive presentations. Part of the trick is the anticipation created by the knowing the next slide is only 20 seconds away, as well as forcing the speaker to make their points quickly.

See for yourself if you find them more easy to watch than regular presentations:

• Small Things doing Big things
• Product Innovation Presentation by Thinksketch’s
• A personal presentation by Jake Smith

For more information about Pecha-Kucha and presentation events near you visit pecha-kucha.org.