Six Minutes and Forty Seconds

Ahhh, the Pecha Kucha – a lesson in brevity and discipline. For those who don’t know, a Pecha Kucha (which is Japanese for chit chat) is a presentation of 20 slides, each one set to autoforward after 20 seconds, so the whole presentation is complete in six minutes and forty seconds. They are a challenging way to tell a story and a good way to pave the way into a group discussion. The rigid format is not to everyone’s liking and I encourage everyone who has not tried one before to give it a go. My good friend Flora Marriott blogged a great piece including fab tips on Pecha Kuchas here, highly recommended reading.

I was fortunate to help Thomson Reuters and their Project Management community and guests have some useful fun thinking about how to make work better earlier this week. We used Pecha Kuchas as a way of sowing idea seeds that some people chose to intellectually water as part of some bigger, very energising conversations. We played with lots of ways of developing content throughout our time together and the essence of each Pecha Kucha was captured by Tim Casswell and his team at Creative Connections. I thought rather than share the presentations themselves, I would like to share the pictures Tim and co made of the presentations with you, I hope they spark a few thoughts in you too.

Anthony Allinson on Community

Anthony Allinson Pecha Kucha
Anthony Allinson Pecha Kucha

Yours Truly on Why Are We Here? (in part a scene setter for the day)

Doug Shaw Pecha Kucha
Doug Shaw Pecha Kucha

Nicky Maddalena on Learning Experiences

Nicky Maddalena Pecha Kucha
Nicky Maddalena Pecha Kucha

Brian Knights on Fit For Purpose

Brian Knights Pecha Kucha
Brian Knights Pecha Kucha

Tom Defoe on Entropy

Tom Defoe Pecha Kucha
Tom Defoe Pecha Kucha

 

Author: Doug Shaw

Artist and Consultant. Embracing uncertainty, sketching myself into existence. Helping people do things differently, through an artistic lens.

5 thoughts on “Six Minutes and Forty Seconds”

  1. Doug,

    Brilliant post summarising a productive and enjoyable day. Thank you.

    We should share some of the internal feedback. Your style went down very well indeed.

    All objectives achieved. New York here we come…

    Anthony

    1. Thank you and yours for the opportunity Anthony. Productive and enjoyable – that will do very nicely. And thanks for your feedback it would be great to hear some of what you’ve received – particularly around what we might do better. Truth is I pour hours and hours of practice in so that on the day I create the smallest possible ripple – just enough in fact to help others help themselves. A day like the one we just experienced should never be about the facilitator, yet sadly from my experience too often they are. I should blog about this stuff – thanks for the nudge.

  2. Doug,

    Fantastic learning experience. For me Pecha Kuchas are like an extreme sport for presenters 🙂 . I already have my team ready to take the next step in trying for themselves. Thanks ever so much for your support and open approach.

    Nicky

    1. Extreme sport for presenters – love it! You took us on a journey that mixed work and personal very well and I personally find that mix very inspiring, well done.

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