Veronica and I were asked to present at Pecha Kucha Night #1 in Worcester a few years ago. Pecha Kucha, pronounced Pachak-A-Cha, is a Japanese invention that will allegedly take boring powerpoint presentations and presenters and make them interesting and fun.
So my friends, I present to you the HOW IT WAS TO BE A PRESENTER at PECHA KUCHA-- for this is a growing phenomenom and eventually everyone will have to be a presenter because there will be no one left-- so I offer this info to you as an insider on the outside;
The event was scheduled to start at 8:20-- there is a 20 theme to Pecha-- 20 slides, 20 seconds and for those of you military types 8:20pm is 20:20 hours. So 20 is thought to be good luck.
Organizers Cindy, Scott and Michelle asked us to be at the event around 6:45-- now at the time I thought it started at 7:20 but that was the "mixer" portion of it.
Okay, so we walk in the back door at about 7 and help ourselves to the wine and assorted snacks that are set out for us, we also spot our good buddy Derek Ring, say hello to a few other fine folks and start talking to Derek about comics and art.
Cindy has a meeting for the volunteers who have arrived, and there are a lot of them-- she wisely over compensated so no one was stuck doing something boring all night--then gave us the order we'd be speaking in-- Veronica and I were speaking as a pair about our partnership and the SPACE 242 show and we were set to be next to last-- Number 7 which would put us on about 9:30 or so.
The first presenter is an improv comic from New Hampshire and he's hilarious-- we don't envy the guy following him and suddenly are glad to be 7th.
The show moves fast, and they've arranged a diverse group of speakers; Derek Ring brought the house down with his "boobie" picture and we were entertained by all of the presentations in the first half.
There was a break and then we were up shortly after that. The setting was intimate but still held a good amount of people, the crowd was receptive and after we were done we had several people come up to us to chat it up.
