“Let’s go see a PowerPoint Presentation” is probably one of the least common phrases muttered when discussing with friends what you’re going to do and where to go for an entertaining night out, however on Tuesday the 29th of April 2008, creatives, designers, architects and people hip to the scene will get together at the Konex Theater to watch 14 people present their PowerPoint Presentations and partake in the worldwide phenomenon of Pecha Kucha (pronounced ‘Peh-chak-cha’).
Pecha Kucha Night was originally started in 2003 by Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein - two architects based in Tokyo who wanted to give their architect friends an opportunity to discuss their ideas, projects, designs and inspirations. However to curb the long-winded speeches of the presenters, they decided to impose some rules: first of all a presentation had a limit of 20 slides presenting images and each slide could only be played for 20 seconds. This limits each presentation to exactly six minutes and forty seconds - hence the Japanese word ‘Pecha Kucha’ roughly translated as ‘chit-chat’.
During the following years, Pecha Kucha Night has evolved into a global phenomenon - reaching 122 cities worldwide and sharing the intellectual and creative climates of each region with the attendees. One of
Buenos Aires’ famous Pecha Kucha presenters is singer-songwriter Kevin Johansen who last presented in December of 2006. This coming Pecha Kucha’s line up is boasting architects, visual artists and musicians all preparing to share their motivations with Buenos Aires on that night.
So by all means, check it out - it promises to be rather fast-paced and definitely not the boring PowerPoint Presentations that we (unfortunately) have become accustomed to at our jobs. But maybe attending a Pecha Kucha Night can inspire us to change that!
So check out these links to find out more about Pecha Kucha in Buenos Aires and around the world:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-09/st_pechakucha
