In a lecture regarding one of our options for our 3rd year professional practice submission, a huge helpful part of it was advice on public speaking and presenting. We were told about the Pecha Kucha method, a simple set of rules that a presentation should be 20 slides long and you spend 20 seconds on each making your presentation just over 6 mins. This is supposed to be an optimum amount of time for explaining everything you need to without going on irrelevant tangents while still being interesting a to viewers.
The concept was crated by architects Mark Dythem and Astrid Klein, who were fond of hosting ‘show and tells’ at their office with many types of worker but prompted by the notion that “architects talk too much” made these set of rules. They expanded this idea to hosting events in cities all over the world where anyone has the opportunity to stand up and present. Dythem talks about how important this in their TEDtalk (PechaKucha: Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein at TEDxTokyo (youtube.com)) because there are few opportunities for people to present their work, and in places like Bogota this has made a huge difference with the mayor saying that it has changed their city!
We were shown a Pecha Kucha example by a past student called Tom Heatley uploaded on the Pecha Kucha website on the Colour Red. The interesting thing about this presentation is that he had his slides set so that they would automatically change to the next one after 20 seconds, forcing him to move on when he spoke too much about one topic. This meant that at times he slightly panicked occasionally when he overran onto the next slide but ultimately you can tell that overall it helped the flow better in terms of engaging the audience because he’s clearly very passionate about the colour red and knows a lot about it so it is good to refine the information.
