A New Way to Present

In a recent post I discussed some of the common mistakes that we all make from time to time when presenting. I described the experiences of Jim who spoke at a recent meeting. I recommended that when preparing and delivering presentations we need to focus on some core techniques - clarity of messages, good graphics, effective time management and speaking to your audience.

In this post I want to introduce you to a presentation concept known as Pecha Kucha - here you limit yourself to 20 slides - each slide can only be shown for 20 seconds - & here is the key - you are not in charge of the slides - either you put it on auto pilot or hand the control to somebody else.

I am grateful to my good friend Larry Lester for drawing my attention to this concept. Larry writes in his blog

"I discovered an interesting method for the delivery of presentations, totally different from anything that I have previously encountered. It is called Pecha Kucha - within 400 seconds you must make your point. This is very intriguing stuff. Just think how different it is from the prevailing norms of presentations. And Pecha Kucha has real added value – it is an excellent way to start discussions and business relationships."

I am personally fascinated by this technique & plan to try it out. I think that there is a real challenge here - remember that one of the hardest things to do when speaking is to PAUSE - people need time to absorb what you have to say - so in just over 6 minutes you have to get the audience's attention, develop your ideas and communicate your message and allow the listeners to understand your message.

Write in with your comments on the idea and if you try it out for yourself let us know how you get on.

Larry Lester is a highly-experienced marketing writer who has been involved in the sales support process in Israeli high-tech companies for many years, participating in the development of customer-directed documents and responses to RFPs. You can read the full blog article here