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/
On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 9:32 PM, inode0 inode0@gmail.com wrote:
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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John,
I've actually attended a conference here in SLC (called Ignite Salt Lake [1]) and it's an awesomely fun evening. We had around 10 talks in just over two hours and it was amazing the things I learned in just that short of a time. From a 12 foot motorized and computerized jellyfish which visits Burning Man every year, to an art project created in someone's home before they tore it down to rebuild.
If you are interested, visit the site and learn more. They're having another one coming next month too.
Cheers,
Clint
ambassadors@lists.fedoraproject.org