What is Pecha Kucha?

Pecha Kucha is a presentation format.  It’s increasingly common at conferences and for #altc2011 a variation is being used for poster presentations.

Pecha Kucha presentations are 6-minutes 40-seconds.  The speaker must use 20 slides that auto-advance every 20-seconds & you are not allowed to run-over! Strictly speaking each slide should only contain an image. The format was developed in Tokyo (hence the Japanese name) by two foreign architects: Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein. Pecha-Kucha roughly translates to chit-chat.

It’s a great format as it really makes you focus on what you need to say and keeps it short for the audience . It has been used to effectively at the LSE for students’ seminar presentations on a Geography course, with positive feedback from staff and students.

Pecha Kucha at ALT-C 2011

This year the traditional poster exhibition has been replaced by ePosters with accompanying short presentations spread over 6 sessions.  The presenters will be delivering Pecha Kucha style, but with different timings: a maximum of 9 slides for 45-seconds each & without the image-only restriction.  I’m really looking forward to these sessions and will be attending at least 3  (as I’m chairing them!).

How do you pronounce Pecha Kucha?

I’m not usually pedantic but as an ex-Tokyoite English teacher I have a duty to answer!  There are two basic options: traditional japanese (ie the correct way) or incorrectly (with limitless variations it seems).

1. In Japanese it is pronounced pe-cha-ku-cha (ie as written) with equal stress on each of the 4 syllables
2. The most common mis-pronunciations are pe-chak-cha or pe-chach-ka usually with emphasis on second syllable.

How many ways can you pronounce Pecha Kucha?

I’ve only tried it once, it’s hard.  This is a recording of my live PK on Cloudworks in 2009.

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