[Ambassadors] Fedora Pecha Kucha Hour

inode0 inode0 at gmail.com
Thu Feb 26 04:32:04 UTC 2009


This may be an off the wall idea but bear with me (flame me later if you want).

I recently ran across the pecha kucha[1][2] style of presentation and
began thinking about different aspects of it that I find appealing.
The short description of this style is that each presentation consists
of exactly 20 slides and each slide is displayed for exactly 20
seconds as the speaker talks. The entire presentation is 6 minutes and
40 seconds long. Period. So similar in length to a lightning talk but
visually more structured.

So what do I find appealing about this?

(1) Strict time limit - make an interesting point and sit down.
(2) With the 20 second per slide rule the role of the slides has to
change from traditional slide deck presentations. This I think lends
itself to encouraging the presenter to focus more on using slides for
visual support of his talk rather than for conveying written
information.
(3) Resulting from the strict timing the presenter needs to really
work on timing his talk to stay in sync with the slides. This forces a
focus on preparation that I think might also help focus the talk.
(4) Imagining myself in the audience I think I would find this highly
entertaining especially if done well. If not done well, it only last 6
minutes and 40 seconds.

As you think more about this style one can see it being more amenable
to certain sorts of subject matter but with imagination and cleverness
I think even quite technical material could be presented in this
format.

Where am I going with this? Well, in about 1 hour you could have
probably 6 or 7 of these talks. Are any of you uninhibited enough to
consider trying a Fedora themed pecha kucha hour at the Summit? I'm
thinking of a lead-off talk about Fedora which would briefly introduce
our four foundations followed by a talk about each of those four
foundations.

John

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecha_Kucha
[2] http://www.pecha-kucha.org/




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