Pecha Kucha – The way networking and communications could be

It’s hard to believe amidst the explosion of new networking events here in our city that there was a time when creatives in Portsmouth area hid at their desks pushing pixels and wondering where their next client would come from. Seriously, that’s what the scene looked like to me when I rolled into town in 2004. I heard there was some networking happening in Manchester and Concord…but it seemed a mysterious far-away land that the locals were unwilling to travel to and maybe I even sensed a little fear of “The Manch.”

No idea how to make things any better, I went to work having just escaped from a corporate cubicle where a fair share of my time was spent on PowerPoint for board (or is it bored?) rooms. You know the kind, “decks” of hundreds of slides packed with information that “had to be there.”

“Here’s our presentation, we’re still tweaking but it shouldn’t change too much. Can you just jazz it up?”

“Jazzing it up” usually consisted of making sure all the fonts were the same, that things lined up and that the color palette didn’t invoke queasiness. Really, that was it. It didn’t demand much and for doing this I was praised as a “creative genius.” But it was soul crushing. When I did get to design an ad, package or website I actually got to use visual theory, bold images, color and WHITESPACE (gasp). So  I knew there was more that I could do to help my PowerPoint-weary corporate friends but wasn’t sure how.

It was about this time I happened across a little event sweeping the globe called Pecha Kucha. I had no idea how to pronounce it but armed with my trusty Google I soon solved that:

It turns out that an architectual firm (Klein Dytham) in Tokyo was dealing with the same frustration I was. Their architectual students were getting in front of board rooms with huge PowerPoint decks and boring the crap out of their audiences too!  But they (being much smarter than I) did something about it. They created a new presentation system and Pecha Kucha was born. The first step was outlining some ground rules:

• 20 slides
• 20 seconds each
• You get no control (the slides advance automatically)
• Get it outside the meeting room

That was it…but I was blown away by the impact that this simple concept could have on corporate communications and the creative community. I immediately reached out to the Pecha Kucha organization and I was shocked to find that a few emails and a signed handshake agreement were the only requirements to bring PK to Portsmouth.

This event has gone global…at current count it has already spread to 318 cities worldwide. I think in large part PK’s success is due to the fact that people are sick to death of the way presentations are delivered and because each city is allowed to take the event and use it for the betterment of their artistic communities. In some cities it has a very architectural flavor and in others it is very avant-garde mixed bag. From day one I thought this event could accomplish four things for us here in Portsmouth:

1. Give us a creative networking event that was ours and would serve to inspire each other.
2. Expose our work to clients who might actually hire us…but not in a “one way street” sort of way. Its important that people from the business world present to us too so we can learn about their perspectives and appreciate their environment and needs.
3. Demonstrate a new way to communicate with slides — a way that doesn’t involve bullets or putting every word you want to say on a slide.  Trust that you, the speaker, are enough and all you need is some pictures to drive your point home.
4. Prevent us from having to drive to Manchester.

We’re well on our way. In just 5 events I have witnessed several connections that have been fruitful to both sides. #2 above is really an important point, one too many networking events ignore. Getting together for beers, talking about our creative disciplines or sharing our work is important but we need to invite people from outiside the “creative” community, not to be pitched to or lecture, but to share with, to inspire, and to meet.

After a 6 minute 40 second presentation you’ll have just performed the best introduction you could imagine and the rest of the night is yours to fill in the rest of the picture with the people in the audience. Imagine if meetings could be like that…make your point, pitch your idea and sit down…crack a beer and trust the person that you are meeting with will ask intelligent questions of you and you will have the answers they need.

Pecha Kucha Night #6 is this Thursday…join us….if you’re in another city, find one near you.

Here’s one of the latest PK presentations I found inspiring:

Thanks,

Mike