Richard FoutsCome on admit it, you’ve said this to yourself a million times. But there is a new trend looming that just might offer a cure to ‘death by PowerPoint’. It’s from Japan and it’s called PechaKucha, which literally means ‘chit chat’.
The idea behind this technique is simple. You show 20 images for 20 seconds each. If my math serves me, that’s six minutes and 40 seconds. And – you set it to AutoRun. Sounds easy enough, but this takes courage. Be sure you dry run it a few times before you try it. Let me know what you think. And consider this – if you’re in a hot competition for a large deal (or any deal) this format has a much higher chance of being remembered that your competitor’s “death by PowerPoint.”
PechaKucha pays homage to Steve Jobs masterful talks, where he uses images versus text; stories versus bullets – and tales of how people use technology to improve their lives and their businesses. Steve’s presentations (typically 10 to 12 slides) aren’t designed to present information as much as they are designed to inspire.
In these days of social media there’s more opportunity to use these types of techniques to tell your story. But – there’s also more noise than ever as millions of people tweet, FB, blog and change their LinkedIn status updates. Noise is everywhere – and if you’re using the same old ‘death by PowerPoint’ techniques you are forcing yourself into the abundant noise.
So try something new in 2011. Drop the bullets, the features, the functions, the capabilities. Stop telling us how many employees you have, where you’re located, how many engineers you have, how many bells and whistles you’ve built into your products. Tell stories. Tell us how people use your solutions to solve really important business problems. Sure, we need to hear all those other things, but put them in an appendix.
And try PechaKucha.
http://www.speaker.org/video/pechakucha.html
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5 responses so far ↓
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2 Jeffrey Mann December 30, 2010 at 9:29 am
O’Reilly’s Ignite events have been doing this for awhile in the rest of the world. See the site for lots of videos.
http://igniteshow.com/
3 Richard Fouts December 30, 2010 at 12:51 pm
I went to the site … and discovered that Ignite is a geek event in over 100 cities worldwide. At the events Ignite presenters share their personal and professional passions, using 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds for a total of just five minutes. They are the new toastmasters.
4 Amrita Chandra January 12, 2011 at 12:39 pm
I’ve been to some Ignite events in Toronto and they are great. But what Richard’s post just got me thinking about is — using these in a business context – perhaps on Slideshare or even on our website? Thanks for the idea!
5 Rich Gee March 1, 2011 at 4:22 pm
Richard – Great post. Interesting idea – 20×20.
But as a presenter like yourself, I find that the meta-conversation during a six minute presentation is just a single idea – not a broad concept, vision, or learning.
The focus is probably on speed and integration – not on understanding and interaction with the audience.
Thoughts? – Rich
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