What is Pecha-Kucha?
Pecha-Kucha is a slide presentation style used throughout the world. It originally started in Japan as a way for designers to showcase their talents.
Pecha-Kucha takes you from boredom to stardom by keeping your audience entertained. You use your creative ability to tell your story in 20 slides at 20 seconds each. Using this technique, you take your audience to the questions and answers (Q&A) part of your presentation within 6-minutes and 40-seconds.
That’s a good thing.
Daniel Pink introduced me to this technique in his Wired Magazine article Pecha Kucha: Get to the PowerPoint in 20 Slides Then Sit the Hell Down.
Because I’ve witnessed too many, too long, and too boring slideshow presentations, I embrace Pecha-Kucha. I remember one presenter who had 20 minutes and brought 55 slides. He took twice as long and pushed the entire afternoon line up back by an hour. Plus when I looked around the room, I saw eyes closed and heads resting. Not cool.
Imagine conference speakers using this 6-minutes and 40-seconds presentation technique. Audiences would be alive — even at “siesta time” following lunch. Audiences expect to be entertained. Slideshows with more graphics and fewer words can do this. Plus this can add more time for you to interact with your audience. Again, increasing audience satisfaction. That’s what every speaker wants.
My first Pecha-Kucha
Here’s mine completed in January 2012 as part of my master studies at Quinnipiac University.
You will find some terrific examples on YouTube including instructional videos.
I found this simple, straightforward style for presenting my story refreshing. If you watch my video, you will see that it follows one of my most precious principles in communicating and design — the KISS principle…
Keep it Simple Stupid.
It also follows William Zinsser’s teachings in On Writing Well. Here, Zinsser instructs us to communicate with simplicity, clarity, brevity, and humanity. You can do that with Pecha-Kucha.
Stand out from the crowd.
I encourage you to use this technique in your presentations.
To learn more, check out the organization at http://www.pechakucha.org/.
Wired Pecha Kucha: Get to the PowerPoint in 20 slides then sit the hell down by Daniel H. Pink on August 21, 2007 | Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/2007/08/st-pechakucha/