Pecha Kucha

Last week a colleague introduced me to another new concept. It is a teaching technique (with a competitive element).

At the time he was presenting a module of a training course and he introduced the idea of 'pecha kucha', which apparently is Japanese for chit chat.  The idea is that you present your message in 20 'PowerPoint' slides and that the presentation is set up so that the slides advance automatically, once ever 20 seconds.  The whole thing is over in less than 6 minutes.

Apparently pecha kucha nights (PKN) are arranged for brave speakers to put across their point of view in a concise way, and some people develop an expertise in it.

I was looking forward to the training - but he said that he wasn't able to present it in that way after all.  :(  I have a suspicion that people get so close to their particular areas of expertise that it is difficult to present the items that matter to others without going into the detail that you need to be an expert yourself.

So . . . rising to the challenge I thought I might have a go at it and translated his detailed and knowledgeable training into an attempt to present the things that we really need to know.

I'm delighted to say that he approves.  Now I just need a chance to present it while he is there to answer the really difficult questions!