Pecha what?  Pecha Kucha (sounds like “peh-cha koo-cha”) is a pithy presentation format, 20 slides, 20 seconds each.  You have six minutes and 40 seconds to get your point across.  People all around the world are doing Pecha Kucha. My friend Simon Strong of Human Zoo is organizing a series of Pecha Kucha events in the suburbs of London, and stay tuned for more information. Be looking for Rhyme Not Reason, later this year, in:

• Guildford
• Woking
• Farnborough
• London
• High Wycombe (I’ll be helping organize this one!)
• Oxford
• Reading

Simon’s events won’t be focused on innovation per se, but I’m thinking this public speaking format/phenomena is a great innovation stimulant — no matter what the subject.  Why?  Well, first of all you learn something, and quickly.   But more importantly, it forces one to encapsulate and distill ones ideas.  Try presenting a new business idea using Pecha Kucha and you are forced to come to terms with your own imprecision.  As they say in Hollywood, if you can’t describe a movie in a couple of sentences, you really don’t have a concept. Same for new business ideas, if you can’t communicate with 20 slides, you really don’t know what you are trying to say.

I love Pecha Kucha.  Beyond the words you say, it also forces you to do more with the visuals in a presentation. How many of us have suffered death by PowerPoint? Slides loaded with text are a complete waste of time.  Isn’t it interesting that PowerPoint is often used as a reporting tool, for reports that are meant to be read and not presented?  And yet, how often do those same data-heavy slides end up on a screen boring the living hell, and ruining the good eyesight of, audiences.