1. Using Pecha Kucha to Enhance Your Presentations
Good Morning!
Introductions
Wendy E. Moore, Acquisitions Librarian,
Carol A. Watson, Director of the Law Library,
Alexander Campbell King Law Library
  University of Georgia School of Law
Monday, July 12
10:00 – 10:30 a.m.

2. You’re an architect – living in Tokyo
You’re an architect – living in Tokyo. You are frustrated because the workplace doesn’t allow a way to share and exchange creative ideas. You also happen to own a struggling performance space. So, you invite some colleagues, serve some beer, and turn PowerPoint into a poetry slam.

3. That is just what Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham, two British expat architects, did. The first Pecha Kucha Night was held in Tokyo at their club/gallery called SuperDeluxe in February They saw it as an opportunity for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public.

4. peh-cha-koo-cha
Pecha-What??? Pecha Kucha, usually pronounced in four syllables as "peh-cha-koo-cha", is the onomatopoeic Japanese word for the sound of conversation. The equivalent term in English is "chit-chat".
You don’t have to be able to say it, in order to use it – Carol and I have called it all sorts of things, such as 'PET-CHA KOOCH-AH’ and ‘Pokemon’

5. It is based on a simple idea: 20 slides x 20 seconds
It is based on a simple idea: 20 slides x 20 seconds. The images forward automatically and you talk along to the images. It's a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace. Each presenter has just 6 minutes 40 seconds to explain their ideas.

6. Really it is just a grown up version of show & tell
Really it is just a grown up version of show & tell. Pecha Kucha Nights have become a grassroots movement, with events happening in hundreds of cities around the world, inspiring creativity in a variety of topics worldwide.

7. There are many variations of Pecha Kucha, including Ignite (20 slides for 15 seconds), Lighting Talk, Speed Geeking (where the presentations are given all at once and the audience moves around), and Talk20 (just an easier way to say Pecha Kucha).

8. It is also referred to as Peer Group Learning in Pictures
It is also referred to as Peer Group Learning in Pictures. The result, combines business meeting and poetry slam to transform the corporate cliché of a PowerPoint presentation into a surprisingly compelling beat-the-clock performance art. It’s a combination of sport and art.

9. Is this really new? We have all heard of elevator pitches, a presentation so short you could pitch it to someone in an elevator. Pecha Kucha was the first to combine the idea of the short, concise presentation with timing limitations on presentation software and the use of autoforward.

10. Businesses are using the Pecha Kucha format, especially for internal presentations, as a device to limit the length of presentations, force presenters to focus their messages, reduce interruptions, and ultimately avoid "death by Powerpoint".

11. We’ve all been lulled to sleep by PowerPoint slides.
What exactly is “Death by PowerPoint”? - presentations with too many slides; presentations with badly designed slides; presentations that are just read word for word off of the slides; overuse of bullet points; overuse of animations, charts, or other distractors...

12. “…induced stupidity, turned everyone into bores, wasted time, and degraded the quality and credibility of communication.”
-Edward Tufte
Presentation software, such as PowerPoint, has increasingly received criticism with regard to its misuse and overuse. Edward Tufte, a leading expert on the visual representation of data and a vocal opponent of PowerPoint, compares it to a prescription drug.

13. Pecha Kucha is a way of keeping what is good about presentation software – graphics – and ties it to speed - speed becomes a proxy for enthusiasm, and perks up your audience a bit.  While it may be short, a Pecha Kucha is in fact quite difficult to do. You still need content.

14. Supposedly, Winston Churchill said that if you asked him to talk for 90 minutes to the House of Commons he would need five minutes to prepare. If you asked him to talk on the radio for three minutes he needed weeks to prepare. In the Pecha Kucha format there isn’t time to get side-tracked.

15. A distinguishing characteristic about Pecha Kucha is that the slides are primarily images. If an image is not worth looking at for 20 seconds, then maybe you need a different image. Images doesn’t have to illustrate literally what you are talking about. The images we are using came from Microsoft Clip Art.

16. Pecha kucha works best when there are many people presenting – and should feel like part conference/part social event (sorry, no snacks!). It helps for the presentations not to try to cover too much or try to get too technical. Like design, or poetry, or cooking, there's no one way to do this right.

17. The Pecha Kucha format can free you from the traditional problems and pitfalls of putting together a presentation. There is no risk that you will speak too long, you have the support of slides which will visually engage your audience, and audience expectations are not set too high. There are no ‘back one slide' or ‘wait while I launch this video’ at Pecha Kucha presentations.

18. The Pecha Kucha is being used at conferences such as:
CALI Ignite style Plenary on the topic of “Reboot Legal Education”
Computers in Libraries – panelists express their opinion about 2.0 technologies.
ALA – Marketing Ideas that have worked in academic libraries

19. If you have been looking for a way to spice up presentations during conferences, workshops, meetings, and classes, consider trying Pecha Kucha. This format stimulates creativity and engagement. And it can be used to help us change our pattern of misuse of presentation software to one of effective use.

20. And if not done well, it is over in 6 minutes and 40 seconds
And if not done well, it is over in 6 minutes and 40 seconds! So, hopefully you are not too overwhelmed at this point. We are going to take a break from the Pecha Kucha format now and talk more about how using Pecha Kucha could be useful to you.