How many boring presentations have you gone to? Don’t they seem to go forever? Pecha Kucha is a solution to all of that boredom. It is a presentation style that originated in Japan. Its objective is to help people make crisp, effective presentations that don’t put people to sleep. It lets you show 20 images, for 20 seconds each and thus, cuts presentation time to a neat 6 min 40 secs
The Startup Centre in Chennai held its 8th Pecha Kucha night on July 18, 2015, to a packed audience. The first speaker, Gulikha Reddy spoke about Schools of Equality, an organisation that does activity-based exercises on gender equality in schools. She spoke about how they don’t want to impose views on children, but, they just want them to start introspection. Following this, speakers spoke about open-source mapping and sketches of scenes in Chennai buses.
Then, we heard a woof from outside the door. A big Labrador poked its nose in and made its way to centre stage along with his owner, Abhishek. It was Abhishek’s time to share how Bam Bam, his dog, helped him relax and was the best buddy ever. Bam Bam taught him how to love unconditionally and to be fully in the moment. He said, “Be the person your dog thinks you are!”
The last presentation for the night was by Ramnath, a nature photographer, who quit National Geographic and co-founded the Youth for Conservation along with his long-time mentor, Shekar Dattatri. His slides were filled with beautiful pictures of the Western Ghats and he spoke passionately about his work with nature and students.
Vijay Anand, founder of the Startup Centre, ended the night with a few words about Pecha Kucha around the world and thanked all the presenters for their time. If you missed it this time, you can take a look at all the presentations at http://www.pechakucha.org/cities/chennai
Gopika is an Economics graduate on the outside, and a writer on the inside. She used to be a student reporter for YOCee which she says, gave her the kickstart to move on to writing with her university magazine – The Context, an online news website called the Bastion, and become a peer tutor at the University Writing Centre, Her post-lockdown plan currently is to do her two-year fellowship with Teach for India