Pecha What-cha........?!?

Pecha Kucha....Sounds like an exotic sushi dish but is in fact a style of presentation. 20 slides shown for 20 seconds each…. Easy enough eh!?!?!

Not when you’ve got to do one yourself!! At the end of this term we need to present a pecha kucha on our chosen blog topic, mine being how technology affects relationships and communication. 

I was pretty intrigued by this mysterious event so went along to the pecha kucha being held at The art school on Wednesday .The Vic was so busy! Turns out art school students are really into a pecha kucha! ( I feel like the more I say pecha kucha the weirder it gets.) Confused and filled with anticipation we sat down with a drink and ordered some edgy snacks. The art school food never fails to impress- I chose the honey battered aubergines ( too much batter to aubergine ratio if you ask me but enjoyable none the less )

There were about 8 presentations and all the speakers took a very different approach. The first speakers chosen topic was the history of road signs- seemingly boring topic but he added an element of excitement to it in the way he ran about the stage and spoke as if he hadn’t taken a breath in about 20 minutes. His fast paced technique made it exciting and fun, I was on the edge of my seat clinging onto every word he had to say about the history of road regulation. It was quite a stressful watch though and afterwards I breathed a sigh of relief that he had made it without spontaneously passing out!!!

Other techniques of note were the use of a poetry: It was nice to listen to and quite soothing but to be honest I didn’t have a clue what he was speaking about. Too edgy for me.

Some presentations were so well rehearsed and smooth flowing that you didn’t even notice they had a specific format.

And one guy used awkward pauses to his advantage (still unsure whether this was intentional or not ). There was a lot of hilarity and laughing from the crowd and umming and ahhing from him….. ‘hopefully this slide will change soon…..

…..

….’

So now I'm a pecha kucha expert! Overall it was fun and made me realise how many different approaches there are to this presentation technique and got me thinking about how I would approach mine.

Maybe I’ll use the art of interpretive dance?

Maybe I'll replace my words with mimes?

Maybe I wont say anything at all…

Or maybe the edginess of the art school has gone to my head.