Pecha Kucha Birmingham

We've neglected our blog a bit of late, but we're giving it a bit of a spring refresh.

We've updated the presentation section with video's of all our brave, interesting and inspiring speakers from the last four events. There’s such a wide range of topics covered, including Scottish bands, the power of imagery, a passion for librarians and why it’s great to live in the UK. Check them all out and get inspired and, maybe, you can have a go next time!

We are tantalizingly close to our next event. We’ll be at Frederick’s Bar in the Jewellery Quarter on 18 April. We have been really pleased with the renewed interest in Pecha Kucha after it had a bit of a sabbatical, and have a big gaggle registered to come and some great speakers. You can see some biogs of the speakers on the event page and you can still register by clicking on the link at the top of the blog.

We can't wait to see you all on Wednesday!

Jo & Emily

A huge thank you to our Volume 2 sponsor - The Definitive Design Co. based in the Jewellery Quarter, making us lucky enough to provide refeshments at this PK night.

The Definitive Design Co. is a Birmingham based Graphic Design partner, specialising in the design of corporate identities, brand images and marketing collateral. Good design is central to the way they work and is echoed in their moto - "design matters".

The Definitive Design Co. works with a variety of clients from all sectors; professional services, retail & commercial and also within the voluntary and community sector. Working closely with our clients we champion the value of good design .Our process helps our clients to clarify their aims, focus their business/organisation's activities as well as providing creative solutions to achieve their aims.

Check out the website www.thedefinitivedesign.co.uk

And here's what they had to say about themselves!

James Rock

James is a Birmingham based business and service designer with a talent for abductive thinking - which is why he is sometimes described as a "maverick" and/or "a bit of a dreamer". He is a YES man… i.e. when someone says NO James believes this is merely an invitation to prove them wrong!  He has a talent for producing things, and is constantly inquisitive about the world and its people. He is passionate about many things in life, and unafraid to jump in at the deep-end of new experiences - often making a big splash! He has tried to escape Birmingham several times only to return again, leading him to think that the centre of Earths gravitational force lies somewhere under Victoria Square…

John Kirriemuir

John is a shambrarian (go look it up) who wanders across Europe and the USA in search of good coffee, wifi, pizza and libraries. He has never taken driving lessons though oddly has flown a crop sprayer and driven a combine harvester and tractor. Though from a farm near Evesham, he is ancestrally rooted in the Kingdom of Smethwick. He owns 14 games consoles and even more library cards. John ranks the highlight of his life as high-fiving Nelson Mandela and not being beaten up by the security guards immediately afterwards. Of the nine relationships he has enjoyed in the last 26 years, seven have been with qualified librarians; but more on this at the Pecha Kucha...

Steff Worthington

Steff. J Worthington, graphic artist and cartographer. Keen interest in history, design, early and celtic music, and mistakenly believes he can play the harp. He is the chairperson of 'Words Behind Walls', Chester's creative circle and spends his free time pondering the great questions of the universe such as 'how do womens handbags bend space/time?', 'why dont we see baby pigeons?', & 'jordan; why?'

Donato Esposito

 
From the man who brought the long lost ancient word of Bostin back into mainstream modern vocabulary - well at least in parts of Birmingham, The Black Country and Australia - will be presenting on his take on passion.

Now, while we all make use of the abundant social media technologies available to us and scramble to make friends with people we've never, and are unlikely to ever, meet, there is a view that trying to convey a message in 140 characters has led to the dumbing down of our society and the inability to talk in properly constructed sentences. Innit?

Those same people would no doubt also bemoan the idea behind Pecha Kucha. How can you possibly introduce, discuss and conclude a presentation in 6 minutes and 40 seconds? Coming form academia, I've had the misfortune to sit through some utterly impenetrable presentations that have stretched well over the 20 minute mark. Despite my best intentions I've often found myself drifting off to some other place and thinking why can't people just say what they mean in a clear, concise and entertaining manner? To be fair, public speaking is not something that everyone can or wants to do, but if you do put yourself up there then there really should be some rules about etiquette.

And this is what makes Pecha Kucha such a fantastic idea and why it is easy to understand why it has caught on right across the globe. 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide, 6 minutes 40 seconds in total. Simple!

If you don't like talking you have visual prompts and a defined time limit, 20 seconds (it feels longer, trust me!) once those seconds are up, they are gone and the next visual comes up.

If you do like talking, you have a defined time limit, 20 seconds (it's no time at all, trust me!) once those seconds are gone, they stay gone!

Everyone's happy.

I was lucky enough to get a spot at the first, of what without doubt will be many, Birmingham Pecha Kucha. It was a bit of a last minute thing. I knew the topic I was going to talk about, Birmingham Popular Music, but couldn't decide how I was going to approach it. I then came up with the idea of using song lyrics from the bands and musicians that would be appearing on the screen. This meant a lot of practicing to get my timing right so as not o miss my cue, I mean what could be worse than laying a Steel Pulse lyric over a Duran Duran visual?

All this worry about timings though was somewhat allayed by watching/listening to some of presentations on the Pecha Kucha site where presenters were clearly not worriying about matching up the visual to what they were talking about. Ahh I thought, no worries my fellow speakers will no doubt miss their cues, run over time, stutter, miss things out and so on, I can't be worse surely?

Boyed by this sense of a sort of moral superiority, I headed to the Old Joint Stock in Brum for the event. I wasn't sure what the crowd would be like but when I saw I was on last I felt even more confident, everyone would be drunk and wouldn't remember a thing! Was I wrong!

All 5 speakers, Rob, Lorna, Stuart, Rob and Andy were brilliant. Informative, entertaining, funny, considered and engaging. I followed Andy who did a presentation of Bird Watching in Birmingham. Suffice to say it has the audience in raptures and there was about 20 questions thrown at him. All I could think of was 'bloody hell! follow that!'. Everyone seemed sober, everyone seemed entertained, it had been a brilliant evening and now I had the dubious pleasure of finishing the night off. But would it be on a high or a low?

By the reaction I got, I think the audience liked it as much as I enjoyed doing it. You can find out the topic and make your own mind up by clicking here: and also watch the other presentations.

One thing for sure, I'll be going to the 2nd Pecha Kucha in November, I suggested you do too.

Big up to Jo and everyone else who helped put this great event on!

Sayōnara

Jez

Everyone. In. The. Room. Is. Cooler. Than. Me. So read a Tweet sent by an attendee at Birmingham’s 1st Pecha Kucha night (see www.pecha-kucha.org/night/birmingham)   Given that ’everyone’ included myself, a 40 year old distinctly ‘uncool’ bloke who has spent much of his career within and around the public sector I was quite chuffed to see that assessment.

Read all about Pecha Kucha at the link above. The first Birmingham event was on Wednesday 8th September. What an eye opener it was. Amongst others  I saw presentations on birdwatching in Brum, the history of Brum’s music scene and an immigrant cartoon hamster’s view of life in the 2nd city. I also put my modest offering on regeneration of the City Centre forward to a very kind and supportive audience. Each and every presentation had to be done in exactly 20 slides, with exactly 20 seconds devoted to each slide; thus 6 mins and 40 seconds per presentation. It was a gathering of c.50 folks, mostly a youngish ‘artistic/creative’ crowd with mild Twitter addictions and I would say a greater appreciation of technology than the ‘(wo)man in the street’ but there were some pretty serious businesses represented there and it was a great night, it really was.  

The reason it was so great was the sheer ‘energy’ being displayed and also the enthusiasm for how creative types can work together.

Now my business is to some extent a little schizophrenic. There is ‘creative Rob’ dabbling in social media consultancy & training and looking to push the message that locally-owned, locally-rooted businesses and enterprise can create sustainability and cohesion far more effectively. A couple of attendees at Pecha Kucha mentioned the possibility of collaboration to me and if you are reading this I will be in touch! Working with other freelancers and small business networking really seems in vogue at the moment. Social Media Cafes, the ‘Jelly’ movement and LinkedIn groups becoming ‘real life’ networks and meetings all seem to be thriving.

We then have ‘strategic Rob’. This guy responds to public sector generated PQQs, ITTs and RFQs. He makes longwinded Powerpoint presentations and makes comments on unremittingly strategic public sector, public sector/private sector initiatives such as Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) Often these initiatives and bidding regimes feature much ‘wheel reinvention’ of approaches to economic development that are at best ‘mixed’ in terms of effectiveness…grants to attract Inward Investment or ‘key clusters’ anyone? Often the ‘collaboration’ at the surface of these processes is coloured by much jostling for position for jobs and roles between individuals and organisations.

I wonder if there is anyway I (and more importantly others) can somehow bring the open collaborative approach, enthusiasm and energy of the freelance, creative sector and apply it to the hitherto more turgid and bureaucratic world of economic development & regeneration?

Life is unlikely to be one ongoing PechaKucha night but it would be great if it was.

Rob Weaver

Development Director,

c3 Connected Consulting Ltd

W: www.socialmediaandregeneration.co.uk
M: 07792 244614

Wow. I presented at the first Pecha Kucha Night in Birmingham, and rediscovered in the process what an adrenaline rush was like. As a younger person, I was crippled by nerves. I used to save my best performance for the rehearsals, when it didn't matter. Call it what you want - increased maturity, experience, or just an acknowledgement that life isn't about the prep, it's about the do, but I seem to have found out how to use nerves to my advantage.

My presentation was ostensibly a sightseer's tour of Birmingham City Centre - I photographed some of my favourite city strolling spots, knitting them together under the theme of progress through a respect for individual expression. My party trick, though, was to pepper the photographs with cartoons, giving the parallel viewpoint of my "pet hamster", Comic Chomik. Chomik means "hamster" in Polish; in the presentation, I styled him as a Polish immigrant, sampling Birmingham life and culture through fresh, enthusiastic eyes. The dual viewpoint was inspired by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys' hit song "New York State of Mind", which cleverly flicks from the everyday and practical through to the dreamy chorus. The decision to go with cartoons to explain an idea (something I had many doubts about initially) was inspired by the success of Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett's cartoon band Gorillaz in holding the attentions of an adult audience for the better part of a decade.

I didn't have time in the talk to go through the genesis of Comic Chomik. I probably didn't explain terribly well how he matters to a discussion about Birmingham. But here is a chance for me to try and make up for that. A friend from my past, who came from Poland, had two guinea pigs for pets. Having perhaps seen a glimpse of a children's book in a bookshop, or an animation on TV, I decided to surprise her by drawing a comic strip starring her guinea pigs, in various surreal situations inspired by things that might happen in a cage. One of these was a tennis ball (known to the characters as "the hairy apple" as guinea pigs view everything through the prism of food), left in the cage for the pigs to play with, and developing a personality of its own, unbeknown to one of the rodents. You get the idea. Anyway, my friend liked the stories, but also got a whiff of childishness, something viewed in the negative by some people. I thought about this in a different way: what about if a small dose of childish silliness could sugar a pill, and transform a serious message into something people could have a laugh at, whilst still learning something? This was how I attacked the Pecha Kucha theme of "Birmingham". Having used Comic Chomik, originally a walk-on character in the guinea pig cartoons, in a couple of other cartoons this year, I decided to make him my focus.

Somehow this all came together to form a vaguely cohesive whole. I was nervous beyond even my own expectation on entering the theatre, and meeting some of the audience, and some of the presenters. It's no exaggeration to say I look up to some of the people who were in the room with me. I felt uncool, and underprepared.

I had forgotten that Pecha Kucha is about bringing an individual style to the art of presenting. I may not have been perfect, and I may not have delivered the serious messages and the gags with the kind of timing I had rehearsed, but I got my words out, and people seemed to appreciate my pictures. Regardless of their view of my message (and one esteemed audience member felt there was a Marxist undercurrent - I'll leave it to the viewer to decide whether you feel there was one), I'd gone in front of an audience, outside my comfort zone, and done what I'd intended to do. And that, for me, was a victory.

Pecha Kucha has taught me to stop worrying, collaborate, communicate, and recognise that being silly and being serious are not oil and water - they mix, they compliment each other. Thank you Pecha Kucha, and thank you Jo Hardy, for organising this event. My head has been full of ideas since I began planning for Pecha Kucha, and I intend to take them forward.

If you want to know a little more about what excites me, in the Midlands, the UK and further abroad, whether it's art, culture, pop music or travel, visit my blog, http://awenworld.typepad.com. It's inspired by my favourite publications, including Monocle magazine, and also some of my favourite newspaper columnists.

It's just 24 hours to go until Birmingham's Pecha Kucha night Volume 1 and as the organiser I'm very excited to be part of something which I hope will grow and grow! It been hectic organising it as well as doing a full time job and studying for a professional qualification but I am looking forward to seeing it all come together!

I must say the first lot of speakers are great and very brave souls to go first. We've got everything from Brum's music to its beautiful buildings to its wildlife...and theres even some cartoons thrown in! I'm not giving anymore away though. You're just going to have to come and join us! Make sure you get your tickets http://bit.ly/d73Mti

I set the theme as Birmingham to give a basic structure to it for the first one and hey we all have something to say about Birmingham....don't we?! The range of presentations are great and despite all being on a very narrow theme are all VERY different!

The main thing now...stick to 20 seconds per slide! There no other rules! Chat, watch, drink and enjoy!

Best get organsising the next one now I suppose....!