20/20 vision for corporate innovators: Pecha Kucha
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“Let us now bullet-point our praise for Mark Dythamnand Astrid Klein, two Tokyo-based architects who have turnednPowerPoint, that fixture of cubicle life, into both art form andncompetitive sport. Their innovation, dubbed pecha-kucha (Japanese forn”chatter”), applies a simple set of rules to presentations: exactly 20nslides displayed for 20 seconds each. That’s it. Say what you need tonsay in six minutes and 40 seconds of exquisitely matched words andnimages and then sit the hell down. The result, in the hands of mastersnof the form, combines business meeting and poetry slam to transformncorporate cliché into surprisingly compelling beat-the-clocknperformance art.”
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Anyway, the first presentations were such a hit that Dytham and Klein began hostingnmonthly pecha-kucha events for hundreds of Tokyo-based architects andndesigners. Now there are pecha kucha nights in 80 cities all over the world.
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ASIDE: According to Wikipedia, Pecha Kucha is pronounced as “peh-chak-cha,” which in Japanese loosely translates to “the sound of conversation.”
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[image: the two founders of the Pecha Kucha movement]
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