MANY SCHOLARS SPEND years developing
research before presenting their findings
via pages and pages of text. And, yet,
while they can write detailed and often
complex academic papers, those same
scholars might be apprehensive about the idea of reducing their hard work to a
presentation lasting just six minutes and
forty seconds.
This past March, that was the challenge before seven academics—both professors and grad students—at the Muma College of Business at the University of South Florida in Tampa. They had agreed to use Pecha Kucha, a concise presentation style developed in 2003 by two architects, to communicate their research to an audience. The Pecha Kucha format has strict limitations: The speaker can present just 20 PowerPoint slides, each shown for only 20 seconds before automatically advancing to the next.
Pecha Kucha presentations are much
like job interviews, in which people must
convey important information in a limited
amount of time, explains Kaushal Chari, associate dean. If speakers go on
too long, their presentations could go on
without them; if they don’t speak long
enough, they could be faced with uncomfortable
silence before the next slide
appears. The exercise was meant to help
the researchers develop communication
skills such as brevity and timing—both
key in reaching nonacademic audiences.
At Muma’s Pecha Kucha event,
speakers presented on topics ranging
from the identification of risk among
cloud services to the effect of alcohol
consumption on speculative investment
behavior.
Pecha Kucha nights are now held in
more than 1,000 cities worldwide. To learn
more about this presentation style, visit
www.pechakucha.org.