Lexington, KY - We've all had to endure it. A speaker at a business meeting or seminar drones on ad nauseam about his or her pet project. You're practically nodding off from boredom. Wouldn't it be great if you could see and hear that presentation in six minutes and 40 seconds, and no more?
Welcome to Pecha Kucha. That's Japanese for chit-chat. This unique format requires the speaker to present information in a PowerPoint while obeying the 20/20 rule - 20 slides, for 20 seconds each - and you're done. That way, content can be easily, efficiently and informally shown.
"You're done. Next?"
Pecha Kucha, pronounced in three syllables (peh-chak-cha), was devised in Tokyo in 2003 by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein-Dytham Architecture. Their idea was to create a presentation format that would let a lot of young designers quickly show off their work or ideas. The beauty of the 20/20 format is that it is concise, the interest level is usually high and it gives a dozen or more people a chance to present.
"It's not putting someone on a platform in front of a lot of people and putting pressure on them," said Kent Lewis, 32, of Lexington, worldwide product solutions manager for Hewlett-Packard and a big advocate of Pecha Kucha. "It's to give people with talent a chance-people that you might not know about."
The format doesn't allow for a question-and-answer follow-up, and it's not an in-depth lecture. The pacing of the images shown may be ideal for those in a hurry or who have short attention spans. A presentation theme may be created for the event. After it's over, the speakers may go out into the crowd and mingle with the audience for a little networking. Food and drinks are often served. Presenters usually come from such fields as design, photography, architecture and creative pursuits, but events have also featured people from academia, the business world and more.
Lewis first experienced a Pecha Kucha Night while traveling in Denver. There were four presenters that evening, all with different ideas and styles, and Lewis found the fast-paced concept fascinating. So when he returned home, he registered Lexington to become a Pecha Kucha (PK) city-one of just 170 such cities around the world, and the first in Kentucky.
"They (Klein-Dytham Architecture) created a Web site and copyrighted the name. Now if you want to use the name, you have to submit an application and they will send you an agreement to sign," explained Lewis. "You don't have to pay anything, but you have to tell them about yourself and your city, assure them that you are nonprofit and that you will bring talent and creative minds together locally."
The agreement also calls for each local "franchise" to hold four Pecha Kucha events per year. Lewis is planning Lexington's first gathering, to be held Thursday, June 18, at 7 p.m. at LexArts, 161 North Mill Street. He's created a Web site for the event (www.pecha-kucha.org/cities/lexington). Lewis wants the PK to piggy-back off of downtown's Thursday Night Live, taking place a few blocks away in Cheapside Park, so people can make a whole night of it.
Appealing and unusual presenters are being lined up. One of them will be Art Lehmann of Lexington, who will present images of the cities he has lived in over the past 20 years. "I can't even cover one of those cities in six minutes and 40 seconds," said Lehmann with a laugh. He and his wife have moved to a different city every five years, and Art takes a new kind of job each time - bartender, motorcycle salesman, sporting goods manager. Once he chartered sailboats. The cities will be San Diego, Las Vegas, Albuquerque and Lexington. "I will pare it down and it will be interesting, I'm sure. It isn't difficult to make it interesting. The hardest part will be trying not to wander off."
Gina Greathouse, senior vice president for economic development at Commerce Lexington, saw a PK in Cincinnati and thought doing it here would be smart and valuable in giving talented, creative minds a new opening. "It puts Lexington on the map. It's a growing, interesting event," she remarked.
Trying to keep talented people in Lexington in order to prevent a brain drain seems to be a mission for Lewis, who is also a member of Commerce Lexington's In2Lex board, which strives to keep engineers in Lexington. He has also helped organize "Geeks Night Out" events, which are held every two months with a similar goal in mind. "I think Pecha Kucha is a great tool to network with and to gel your company," he said.
Greathouse thinks Pecha Kucha Nights will offer an outlet for the kind of people Lexington needs to retain. "We need to find additional opportunities to keep our engineers and tech people here - funky, eclectic things," she concluded.