Pecha Kucha

I had to post at least once while sitting in a SXSW talk, so here it is...

Can Pecha Kucha be a valuable format for condensed information transfer? I'm slowly processing Edward Tufte's work, and I buy the idea that we do harm by excessive filtering of information to make it palatable to our audience. But for certain topics, environments, and audiences, it makes a lot of sense to condense material.

Pecha Kucha is a style of presentation in which you present 20 slides for 20 seconds each. Transitions are timed, which forces the presenter to make quick and steady progress. The total presentation time comes out at 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Thinking about it reminds me of Dick Hardt's legendary Identity 2.0 presentation.

The Wikipedia article mentions the value for business applications, an area that hits close to home:

This is primarily a device to help ... force presenters to be more focused in their message, allow them to flow uninterrupted, and ultimately to avoid the "death by powerpoint" syndrome, of sitting through long and often tedious powerpoint presentations.

It could be a digestible format for some of the BarCamp presentations.