Top 5 Tips for PechaKucha Presenters!

3 Mar 2006 Category: Events & Exhibitions, Features, Graphics, Japan

PechaKucha Night - the fresh design showcase event now being held monthly in over 10 cities around the world - had it’s 30th showing in Tokyo last night, at SuperDeluxe. This time, PingMag’s very own Jon “Yongfook” Cockle (that’s me) was part of the proceedings, as I gave a presentation on “everyday creativity”. Have a look at what I presented and also learn from my experiences with my Top 5 Tips for PechaKucha Presenters!

By Jon.

The thing that sets apart PechaKucha Night from other design events is the format for the presentations. It couldn’t be simpler - each presentation must comprise of 20 slides, and each slide is shown only for 20 seconds. Doing your first PechaKucha presentation is very much like the first time you have sex. You will be cripplingly nervous, your timing is all wrong and you have little idea of when it’s going to end.

Even though I had prepared quite thoroughly for mine (that is, training myself to speak incredibly fast) I still managed to mess up my lines, or just completely blank out for a few seconds. Which is odd for me as I am, if I may say so, no stranger to giving presentations, having done so numerous times in front of hundreds of people at training conferences in my last job. However, it’s the high-speed format of PechaKucha Night that puts an interesting and unpredictable twist on things, and enhances the experience for both the presenter and the audience. PechaKucha Night (Tokyo) Vol.30 was the usual eclectic mix of student design work, architectural showcases and interesting graphics / photography. For example:

We saw some interesting work involving mirror-effect photos, attempting to capture a “moment” instead of simply an image.

Also we were treated to some fantastic examples of contemporary architecture, and images from Mark Dytham’s recent trip to South Africa.

My presentation was entitled, “A Disturbing Foray Into The World Of Everyday Creativity”, which was a rather tongue-in-cheek look at the findings of a personal project of mine from last year. As a web developer / designer-type person I’m constantly trying to think of new ideas for websites and web services. Although 99% of those ideas are either crap or never make it to fruition, the remaining 1% actually do move past the point of me thinking “hmm that would be a good idea” then saying “oh well” and continuing to play on my Game Boy. One of those ideas last year, I turned into an actual site.

More of a proof-of-concept rather than a bona-fide web service (what with it’s hastily-designed appearance and general lack of features), I created a website where you could draw a quick sketch online with your mouse, then save it with “tags” - very much like the way flickr lets you tag photos - which enables you to later see all the sketches by all the different people who have the same tags as yours.

It proved to be quite an interesting social experiment, in that it gave you a fascinating insight into how different people interpret the same word. That, and many of the pictures were either hilarious, grotesque or just downright amazing in their level of detail.

My PechaKucha presentation basically involved me introducing some of the more popular tags and some of the sketches by different users associated with them. Here are a few examples:

When faced with a blank canvas there tended to be a few core images that people resort to when they can’t think of something specific to draw. Faces, Cats and Eyes - like the above example - were among the more abundant. Look at the incredible amount of detail in some of the sketches - remember this is a tiny space they are drawing in (with their mouse, or at best one of those pen tablet things) of 133 x 74 pixels.

Plenty of cats of all shapes and sizes.

Lots of anime fans come to the site…

And video game fans…

Some of the tags are a little disturbing, such as the “gun” tag. Even more so when you realise that most of these are drawn by the same person…

Some sketches show signs of real talent, such as the heavily detailed sketches in the Star Wars tag.

I had a lot of fun doing the presentation, and whilst mine wasn’t as hardcore design-oriented as other people’s, I’d like to think it was still at least moderately entertaining (some of the more smutty sketches garnered a few cheap laughs). However, in retrospect I think there are a few things that I would keep in mind if I were to ever present again. Doing a PechaKucha presentation is - I found - so unlike doing other slide-based presentations that you really will have no precedent to help you prepare for the experience. In addition to this, I have some general observations about PechaKucha presentations from what I have seen over the number of PechaKucha Nights that I’ve been to. So to finish off, I’d like to give my Top 5 Tips for PechaKucha Presenters! You might strongly disagree with me, which is understandable - bear in mind these are just my personal thoughts…

Top 5 Tips for PechaKucha Presenters

1) Practice the hell out of what you want to say. Squeeze out all the ums and ahs. Remember, you only have 20 seconds per slide, so 5 ums and 3 ahs will cost you about half a slide in terms of time and you’ll fall behind!

2) Relate your words to the slide. Perhaps this is down to personal preferences, but I feel the most successful presentations are the ones where the speaker is talking about each slide in turn. I feel it detracts from the overall format and atmosphere of PechaKucha Night if your presentation is simply a long, drawn-out speech that continues as your slideshow advances silently in the background.

3) Relate to your audience. Remember that not everyone in the audience is going to understand or appreciate the intricacies of the complex physics that made your project possible, or the metaphors or subliminal messages that appear in your elaborate graphic work. Try to work in some kind of angle that everyone can appreciate. Draw comparisons to things in everyday life - for example don’t talk about load-bearing structures in terms of tons, express it in terms of cars, or elephants or something. What you lose in accuracy you gain in clarity - and for an audience made up of people from all different industries, that’s invaluable.

4) Smile. As the presenter you are the voice of your work and you are creating the atmosphere, not the other way around. If you look bored doing your presentation, you will probably be boring the crap out of the audience too, even if your work is mind-blowingly brilliant.

5) Have a clear objective and make it clear from the beginning. Tell us what we’ll see in your presentation. Are you going to be talking about 1 project or 5? Looking for a job? Say it at the start, not at the end of your presentation when I’ve stopped listening and I’m looking at how long the queue at the bar is.

Hope those helped a little - if you have any more tips, please feel free to comment below!

59 Comments

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2. hi Ben. The site is around still - feel free to draw something! http://www.sketchplanet.com

   Posted by: Administrator on March 6th, 2006 at 4:46 pm

3. [...] Ping’s tips on how to present devised and copyright Klein Dytham architecture | supported by SuperDeluxe | web design by IMG SRC Contact Us [...]

   Posted by: Pecha Kucha Night: Global » Tokyo VOL 32 on April 26th, 2006 at 8:06 pm

4. [...] Ping’s tips on how to present devised and copyright Klein Dytham architecture | supported by SuperDeluxe | web design by IMG SRC Contact Us [...]

   Posted by: Pecha Kucha Night: Global » Tokyo VOL 33 on April 27th, 2006 at 3:45 pm

5. Very helpful tips! thanks much

   Posted by: Pecha Kucha Night Bogota on September 5th, 2006 at 12:23 am

6. [...] Next Wednesday, see me do a presentation on mobile game design at the 6th Pecha Kucha Night in Off_Corso, Rotterdam. Pecha Kucha are super short presentations consisting of 20 slides. Speakers have exactly 20 seconds per slide to do their thing. Quite a challenge! I’ve finished my slides and a first draft of the talk, now to practice the hell out of my lines… Here’s an Upcoming.org entry I made for the event, here’s the Dutch and international site and finally, here’s some cool Pecha Kucha tips by Yongfook. [...]

   Posted by: See me Pecha Kucha on mobile gaming (Leapfroglog) on October 20th, 2006 at 6:42 pm

7. [...] Top 5 Tips for Pecha Kucha Presenters - “Squeeze out all the ums and ahs. Remember, you only have 20 seconds per slide, so 5 ums and 3 ahs will cost you about half a slide in terms of time and you’ll fall behind!“ [...]

   Posted by: Jeff Barr’s Blog » Links for Thursday, November 30, 2006 on December 1st, 2006 at 5:06 am

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