- PechaKucha is an event in which people prepare and present decks of 20 slides that advance automatically every 20 seconds.
- Most people can’t pull off a decent PowerPoint presentation, let alone 6:40 of timed slides, and they fail badly.
- These are powerful tools for delivering a world-shattering PechaKucha, and they make a damn good PowerPoint too.
- Enter the writing process by clearly visualizing the thing you want an audience member to do after he or she hears your presentation.
- Each 20-second slide should have five to ten seconds of vocals, since you’ll speak more slowly in front of a crowd.
- Aim for consistent timing, cadence, and aesthetics throughout the presentation.
- If each slide is logically connected to the next, overrunning your timing will look intentional and be easy to recover.
- If you want to change the topic, do it abruptly, as through you’re presenting a stream of consciousness.
- Repeat your name, repeat your company, repeat the moral of the story, and repeat your Twitter or URL.
- Do not repeat anything else; telling the punchline twice ruins the joke.
- Text is OK; people will read it ravenously since they don’t know if you’ll have time to say it, so reward them by not saying it.
- “Here’s a list of things I’ve done” presentations are too risky; overrun timing once and you’ll never catch up.
- Use multiple slides per concept or project so the audience can drink in the details.
- Strip out everything that isn’t an epiphany, a punchline, a “holy hell” moment, or ways people can make you famous.
- Keep your presentation relevant to the expected audience.
- Don’t adhere rigidly to the event’s theme – everyone else is doing that and things will get repetitive.
- Rapidly run drafts by others and edit out everything that doesn’t visibly excite them.
- Be bold and make controversial claims you can back up in one-on-one arguments.
- Give audience members an entry point into your objective – a URL, a Twitter handle, a word with rock-solid SEO.
- Rehearse your presentation until you can deliver it with your eyes closed, three times in a row, in ten seconds per slide.
Zack Freedman 