Wow! What an experience it was talking at PechaKucha Cape Town on Tuesday this week! While I admit I felt nervous before speaking, the high after all the applause was pretty amazing!
For those of you who aren’t familiar with PechaKucha, here’s a brief introduction: PechaKucha is a speaking format where you have a 20 slide presentation, and are given only 20 seconds per slide. PechaKucha is an international movement that began in Tokyo in 2003, and now takes place in over 800 cities around the world. In South Africa You can find PechaKucha in both Cape Town and Johannesburg.
We had a diverse group of speakers on Tuesday – including a rock musician, a furniture maker, a coach talking about prejudice, an environmentalist, a dominatrix (I kid you not!), and of course me – 9 speakers in total, so the evening was crammed full of great ideas!
I decided to test drive a new concept – topping up your positivity tank (i.e. your positive attitude) to help you manage stress and overcome challenges. My presentation was well received, with Andrew, the MC of the evening stating that it was one of the best PechaKucha speeches he’d heard. Please don’t get the impression that PechaKucha is only for pro speakers – at least 2 of the people who spoke on Tuesday had never given a presentation before.
Creating, practising and performing a PechaKucha speech is a little different from a normal speech. Getting your message across in 6 minutes 40 seconds is not too difficult, but adhering to the 20 second per slide rule makes for some interesting challenges.
I was somewhat startled when I was on stage and Craig indicated I was speaking much slower than I had been when I was practising. That may not be a problem with a 45 minute presentation – or even a 20 minute presentation – but when you are limited to only 20 seconds per slide it has a significant impact… I had to cut several words from each slide on the fly… which was definitely an interesting experience!
It was wonderful to see so many friends and colleagues braving the cold and rainy weather to enjoy an evening of PechaKucha – thanks especially to Francois rossouw for videoing my speech for me, Craig for the awesome photos, and the ladies from our speaker mastermind group, Women Who Speak for change, for coming along to support. You are all amazing!
If you can get to a PechaKucha evening I’d really suggest you go – there are great ideas being discussed! And if you’re a speaker… or have an idea worth sharing… why not give PechaKucha a go yourself?
To find out more about PechaKucha in South Africa… or to apply to speak:
PechaKucha Cape Town: www.pechakucha-capetown.com
PechaKucha Johannesburg: www.pechakuchajoburg.co.za
