Top 5 Tips for a PechaKucha Presenters

By Jon Yongfook Cockle/PingMag

1. Practice the hell out of what you want to say. Squeeze out all the ums and ahs. Remember, you only have 20 seconds per slide, so 5 ums and 3 ahs will cost you about half a slide in terms of time and you’ll fall behind!
   
2. Relate your words to the slide. Perhaps this is down to personal preferences, but I feel the most successful presentations are the ones where the speaker is talking about each slide in turn. I feel it detracts from the overall format and atmosphere of PechaKucha Night if your presentation is simply a long, drawn-out speech that continues as your slideshow advances silently in the background.
3. Relate to your audience. Remember that not everyone in the audience is going to understand or appreciate the intricacies of the complex physics that made your project possible, or the metaphors or subliminal messages that appear in your elaborate graphic work. Try to work in some kind of angle that everyone can appreciate. Draw comparisons to things in everyday life - for example don’t talk about load-bearing structures in terms of tons, express it in terms of cars, or elephants or something. What you lose in accuracy you gain in clarity - and for an audience made up of people from all different industries, that’s invaluable.
4. Smile. As the presenter you are the voice of your work and you are creating the atmosphere, not the other way around. If you look bored doing your presentation, you will probably be boring the crap out of the audience too, even if your work is mind-blowingly brilliant.
5. Have a clear objective and make it clear from the beginning. Tell us what we’ll see in your presentation. Are you going to be talking about 1 project or 5? Looking for a job? Say it at the start, not at the end of your presentation when I’ve stopped listening and I’m looking at how long the queue at the bar is.

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