Pretty Pictures, Parsed Prose

Last night's optional late session (which I popped into for a minute as a break from the Colts game) was a series of Pecha Kucha presentations. Haven't heard of Pecha Kucha? Be prepared as you definitely will. It's crawling up the long upward slope of a roller coaster and when it hits the top, everyone will be doing it. Try it now if you want to be one of the cool kids on the cutting-edge.

The web site for Pecha Kucha Night describes the format as such: "Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each - giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show."

The format was conceived for young designers to show off their work in a compressed timeframe, but others have quickly appropriated it to constrain PowerPoint talking heads who drone on endlessly. As was done here at Learning 2007, you could schedule 5-6 of these short talks in a session block. I'd probably have them at least linked to a similar theme or questions. The format is fun and keeps presenters on their toes as their slides advance automatically every 20 seconds so they have know way to cheat the clock. The format lends itself to a traditional session environment or to a more social space with food and drinks being served.

I also could see having a small group of folks agree to create presentations on-site ala reality TV (1) based on a topic they draw from a hat, (2) to summarize your entire meeting or an individual topic/issue/presenter, or (3) based on audience suggestions. You could sequester them all in a room for an hour or two, give them a computer with Internet access so they could seek out appropriate images, and then have them all come out at the same time and do their talks. Could be a fun way to have members from different demographics (industry-academia, boomer-millennial, etc.) create talks on the same topic/question followed by a facilitated Q&A with the audience. Much better approach than the typical panel.

Of course, the obvious larger question here worth consider is: "what alternative formats can you create/use that better engage participants while offering a meaningful learning experience?"