Pecha-Kucha Style Presentations Rock!
💼Business
Yesterday I took part in the Pecha-Kucha Night event in my local city where I talked about Passion in business… in just 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide in the pecha-kucha format. It was my second time delivering pecha-kucha and I loved it!
What are the benefits of this format?
1) The speaker has to be prepared
The speaker has only 20 slides and only 20 second per slide and he’s not controlling when the slides change… it’s all automatic. This forces the speaker to prepare the presentation thoroughly and the audience get a better show than ever.
If the speaker is not prepared, at least he sucks for only 6 minutes and than he’s gone off the stage, so the audience doesn’t have to endure a boring speaker for too long.
2) Straight and to the point! Audience is focused!
Again, only 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide - the presentation has to be straight and to the point. There’s no time for beating around the bush. The point has to be clear and the audience will capture it directly.
Because the presentation is so quick, audience is not bored and is focused on the speaker and the message entire time - this gives a speaker a really great audience to talk to.
3) More time for Q&A
Questions and Answers are the best part of every presentation and after such an intense Pecha-Kucha, the audience has lots of questions to ask, which creates a great relationship between the audience and the speaker.
Q&A is also a great time for the audience to relax a little after the intensive presentation and they feel a lot more inclined to ask questions.
I think every tech conference, heck, every conference should adopt a Pecha-Kucha format.
I’ve been to many conferences and barcamp meetings and lots of times speakers suck. Sometimes they’re not prepared, or they didn’t have time to be prepared, or whatever… and it’s a shame because audiences came to these conferences for them. They paid top dollar to be there (even if the conference is free, you have to find time, travel, etc.), but the worst part is that if the speaker sucks, the audience has to endure and listen to this sucking speech very often for a long time…
With pecha-kucha format, speakers need to be ready and if they are not, they only suck for 6 minutes and that’s it. Maybe in Q&A they will shine a little better.
I believe this format would make every conference a lot better. I’ll be trying to deliver my presentations now in this format as well. It’s great and very effective.