Pecha Kucha Experience

“the Process”

Although I have prepared numerous Power Point and Prezi presentations so far, Pecha Kucha differs considerably from them and requires slightly different skills too. First of all, it was quite a challenge to structure the text of our presentation into 20 units and to condense the content of one subtopic into 20 seconds. It was a great advantage that the scope of our topic was not too small or specific and we could freely decide how to process the great amount of information we gathered. What I really enjoyed was the quest for the perfect pictures, which had to be both of high quality and had to express the main point of that specific 20 seconds. Giving a presentation in pairs also requires more responsibility. However, it has not caused any problems in our case. I was lucky to have Harald as my assigned partner since he is not only creative but also very dutiful. Pecha Kucha is not only about writing a well-constructed text and choosing the right pictures but also about timing. As a result of all these features, Pecha Kucha requires more practicing and more considerate preparation.

“the Product”

I really liked listening to the presentations of others. Almost without exception everyone prepared very well. However, after seeing the presentations, I came up with a short list of Pecha Kucha no-nos. First of all, timing should be really taken into consideration. Continuous speaking which is not in harmony with the pictures can be very disturbing. Secondly, too much information on the slides is quite distracting. Finally, only reading from the paper and not keeping eye contact is not a positive feature either. I hope we are doing more PKs in the future because it was certainly a very interesting experience!