
The End Of Boring Presentations - jamesbritt
http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/14/presentations-pecha-kucha-technology-breakthroughs-oreilly.html
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jamesbritt
Phoenix had its first Pecha Kucha night a few days ago. We've had five Ignite
Phoenix events.

I presented at Ignite Phoenix IV (watch! <http://vimeo.com/5351826>). Prior to
that I did a Pecha Kucha format talk at a Phoenix Ruby User Group in an
attempt to get others to do the same (I failed :( ).

Attending the Phoenix Pecha Kucha event I was struck by the differences
between the 6:40/20x20 format and Ignite's 5:00/20x15. The shorter slide
duration, and overall shorter length of each talk, really seems to matter.

It's hard to say for sure, since a good part of this is the quality of any
given talk. These are tough formats to use, and require careful planning and
much practice. In real life not enough people seem to put in the needed
effort. (To be fair, these are all volunteers and are earnestly doing their
best. )

Still, despite what should be minor differences, the Pecha Kucha talks seemed
to drag.

Part of the problem may also have been that the talks were punctuated by
speaker transitions and intros. Meanwhile, at Ignite Phoenix, it's become a
well-old machine: as soon as one speaker is done, the next is out and slides
are rolling within , say, 20 seconds. You end up with much higher information
density.

Anyone else here give an Ignite or Pecha Kucha talk? Or try some other
interesting format?

------
joubert
if the content of your presentation is boring, get new content.

~~~
jamesbritt
Often the problem is that parts of the content are boring, and people don't
want, or know how, to edit.

One would hope that with a shorter format people would have less of a problem
filling the time with not-boring stuff.

