“Pecha-Kucha” PowerPoint for Business Presentations

Two Tokyo-based architects named Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein have turned PowerPoint into both art form and competitive sport with an innovation called “pecha-kucha” (Japanese for "chatter"). I just read about this invention in the September issue of Wired Magazine in an article by Daniel H. Pink.

Pecha-kucha (pronounced peh-chak-cha) applies a simple set of rules to presentations: exactly 20 slides displayed for 20 seconds each. To see an example, watch Daniel Pink’s own version at:

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-09/st_pechakucha

After viewing Pink’s pecha-kucha PowerPoint presentation, I felt inspired. Pecha-kucha is the answer to the “Death by PowerPoint” problem that plagues many business presentations. People misuse PowerPoint by forcing audiences to sit through lengthy and tedious presentations with too much text -- which the worst offenders tend to read aloud. Pink put it well when he said you can “transform corporate cliche into surprisingly compelling beat-the-clock performance art.”

And that brings us back to personal branding and making an impact on your audience. Are you giving a PowerPoint presentation at your next business meeting? Consider the pecha-kucha way of doing things. Transform your weary 20-minute PowerPoint into a dynamic 7-minute performance. What to do with the extra time? Question-and-answer might be a good way to follow up.

This format lends itself perfectly to the 5 to 7-minute format of Toastmaster speeches. As the President of Clayton Area Toastmasters, I’m going to share the new pecha-kucha idea with my club and use it in my next speech.

Audiences appreciate pecha-kucha. This innovative format is being used in big cities all over the world, mostly by architects and designers. A few leaders in the business world have caught on ... you can be among the first.