Pecha Kucha Birmingham

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