Pecha Kucha is certainly one of the trendiest conference format of the moment. Started in 2003 by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham, this original format (20 slides, 20 seconds per slide, no exceptions) is intended to keep “presentations concise, interest level up, and give more people the chance to show“.Pecha Kucha nights have now been organized in 107 cities around the world, and by the time you read this article the number might have increased.

Being a conference organizer, and having to regularily play with the usual parameters (length of talk, number of presenters, slides or not, questions or not, etc…), I was very eager to see one of these nights. After yesterday’s Pecha Kucha Torino here are a few observations:

• For speakers, Pecha Kucha is a reassuring format as it takes a lot of stress away. There is no risk to speak too long, you have the support of slides without much of the usual negative consequences, and expectations are not set too high as in the public’s mind, you should not expect too much from a short format.
• Constraining the number of slides is a good idea. Constraining the duration is more discussable. The speaker should be able to accelerate a particular slide (without getting any extra time for that) because 20 seconds can be an eternity when you only wanted to show an email address or a boring but needed information like a title. Yesterday at least 3 presenters waited for their slide to pass, creating a huge silence that was a catastrophe for the room’s ambiance.
• A good speaker can turn a bad format into a good time, but a good format can’t turn a bad speaker into a star. Things like charisma and intelligibility can’t be influenced by any format, and are still the most important factors of success. It is not because you are using the Pecha Kucha format that you can put anybody on stage. Event organizers, you won’t escape a little work ;)
• 6 minutes and 40 seconds can’t be considered short, and as soon as a less interesting speaker takes the stage you notice it. 3 minutes is short, and would really give more rhythm to the whole format.
• This trend of creating a soft set of rules and packaging it under a brand is quite fascinating. After barcamp, Pecha Kucha, and at home coworking, it’s time to brand and push my grandma diners (see episodes 1, 2 and 3)!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 11:15 pm and is filed under event. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.