Couchsurfing Teach Share Learn Day – PechaKucha

I attended my first PechaKucha event last year in Labo The Mori – Bandung, Indonesia. I was so curious that my friends talked about it many times.

In my opinion, Presentation might sound really boring – It is full of slides with tons of text, presenters reading directly from the slides, and the presentations that seem to take forever!

If you happened to be In Bandung last June, you might probably want to attend a PechaKucha Night called Couchsurfing Teach Share Learn Day. A group called Couchsurfing was experimenting with PechaKucha presentation format in their event called Cocuhsurfing Indonesia Festive – It is an annual national gathering organized by Couchsurfing community of Indonesia. That event was generously sponsored by Centre Culturel Francais, Bandung.

If you never heard of Pecha Kucha 20×20 before, it is actually a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images forward automatically and the presenters talk along to the images.

This presentation made its debut in 2003 by some Architects in Japan. The reason why they invented this presentation was because they think sometimes the architects often talk too much during presentation.

“Because architects talk too much! Give a microphone and some images to an architect – or most creative people for that matter – and they’ll go on forever! Give powerpoint to anyone else and they have the same problem.”

PechaKucha has become a global trend for people to speak their ideas through presentation.

My topic was about my Hosting Experiences in Bandung. My friend suggested me to come out with a topic like no one else. Two weeks before the deadline of the file submission, i finished making all 20 slides. I practiced a lot to get those 20 images down, and to time them correctly.

Being a presenter of Pecha kucha gave me an opportunity to show that doing usual presentation by reading boring words on the screen is in fact insulting my intelligence, by reading what i can read (if the font is large enough) plus the audiences are not even facing you, as they have turned to read!.

I was really surprised by how much it helped me to focus and narrow down my topic to the bare essentials. I was so happy, that the event was quite successful.

If you are interested in PechaKucha presentation, the website on http://www.pecha-kucha.org/ provides much information about it and links to many PechaKucha events in your city.

So, try out some PechaKucha and avoid PowerPoint death!

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Written : AP