Sharing Nicely

Pecha Kucha is a high-energy presentation format pioneered by a group of architects and designers in Tokyo. The idea is to show 20 slides, for 20 seconds each – and then get off the stage. Pecha Kucha Nights have spread around the world and yesterday, the second Pecha Kucha Cape Town took place at The Assembly. People spoke about books, art, illustrations, one person presented a neat idea to improve local transport, and Lonesome Dave did his incredible recusively-remixed harmonica thing.

I was invited to speak about “Sharing Nicely” – the idea, not the blog – and as I prepared the slides, I realised that the format works great as background to design or art talks, but it feels a bit like a cross between a Russian Gymnastics Trainer and a Hamster Wheel if you are trying to link your slides quite closely to what you say. I used a lot of the materials from the Open Everything talk, added slides and ideas that would appeal more to the design/architecture audience, and remixed it all to work in the 20 second format.

By the way, I think nobody got the free beer joke on slide 20, but they were nice enough to laugh anyway!

There wasn’t an easy way for me to record audio at the event, so I made a quick recording at home to go with the slides. It’s pretty much the same thing (at the same speed) as I did live.