Know any long-winded lawyers? Get them to try Pecha Kucha

Pecha Kucha is spreading around the world like wildfire. No wonder! It is a great idea and an antidote to presentations causing death by PowerPoint. Here's how Pecha Kucha (Japanese for "the sound of conversation") works. Presenters each get 20 slides and each slide can only be up for 20 seconds. So each presenter is able to talk for six minutes and 40 seconds. Nice way to ramp up conciseness and organization.

Seth Godin writes:

I love this idea to pieces. . . .

If you are really and truly having a meeting to discuss something, then the Pecha Kucha approach is brilliant. 20 slides, 20 seconds each. Then the PPT gets turned off.

Click here to see Dan Pink's example of Pecha Kucha. Read Pink's Wired article "Pecha Kucha: Get to the PowerPoint in 20 Slides Then Sit the Hell Down" for more about the process, including its origin.

Matt Homann in his post about Pecha Kucha provided a link where can you view other examples. Matt, how was that PK presentation you mentioned?

Anyone out there using Pecha Kucha? I bet it saves time—and reduces boredom and irritation. And I imagine that getting good at this technique would improve all your presentations, not just those in the PK format. Can you imagine a firm where many meetings used PK?

I can think of several loquacious people (yes, some are lawyers) to whom I would like to say, "Would you please go Pecha Kucha that and get back to me?"

Hat tip to MovingFromMeToWe.

Note (added February 3, 2010): Good and comprehensive blog post: Pecha Kucha - the future of presenting papers? (antropologi.info). Excerpt:

It was the first time ever I was totally focused on all the presentations during the whole session:

1) because of the REAL time limit,
2) because of the power point presentations NOT being a text,
3) because of the lack of WRITTEN style of the presentation, the oral style is almost required in this format and in a way natural,
4) because of the lack of word overflow - presentations really to the point,
5) because of the time left for the discussion (real or potential, but still, there is time for that).

Comments

[Carolyn Elefant]

I took a look at these presentations when I saw Matt's post originally. The problem that I have is that I can't really figure out how to apply this technique to a "hard core" legal talk - for example, one where you're explaining multiple parts of the tax code or different layers of jurisdiction. In many cases, the Pecha Kucha presentations are really for presentations where you wouldn't necessarily have a power point, but might instead give a lecture and hold up pictures. If you have examples of it being used for legal matters, I'd like to see them.

[StephanieWestAllen]

I have not seen them used for legal matters yet but do think there would be times where even there they could be helpful. My suggestion was for firm meetings—the committee meetings and the practice group meetings and the associate meetings and the partner meetings and the staff meetings and the firm meetings. The list could go on and on just as many of those meetings seem to do. One of many reasons: Some lawyers have a tendency to pontificate and draw a minor point out forever.

[Matthew Homann]

We did a bit of this at my Idea Market a few months ago. My favorite part isn't necessarily the "20 slides" part, but rather the constraints of telling a story in an artificially limited amount of time/slides/etc.

I've had great success with a "Powerpoint Haiku" exercise I've developed that gives people 3 slides to tell a story. The first is the What, the second is the How, and the third is the Why.

The Haiku part is that the slides may only contain 5 words, 7 words, and 5 words, respectively.