Time for some chit chat - bring on the pecha kucha planning

it all started with a little early morning reading

"Just checked in on the pickled herring in the refrigerator at work. To my horror and relief, it's still there"

I was intrigued

"Settled on 3 ppt slides and a 3-member doo-wop group in identical red sequined dresses singing backup".

I was hooked
maybe I should have titled this post more than a red herring








pechakucha, (literally translated from the Japanese as chit chat), twenty slides of twenty seconds (20x20) the CHI 20 second madness all coalesced during my run this morning....thanks to Cathy Marshal @ccmarshall and Mark Bernstein @eastgate and their animated herring conversation on twitter and to Cristina Costa @cristinacost from our PLE conference committee who will be organising the petcha-kutcha at #PLE_SOU
I have contributed to pechakucha before, our LSL interns last year presented their work via a petcha-kutcha. I have organised poster pitches at conferences and for my students, but with the time and space of a sabbatical and a good run along the riverside I was able to bring together a whole load of ideas
why?
because (includes)

• I think visually, and I am a great believer in the Cartier Bresson docrine that the photograph can capture a certain moment
• I have been documenting my runs with pictures, and often my everyday life.
• I sometimes subscribe to Tufts adage that "Powerpoint is evil"
• I am tired of being subjected to Death by PowerPoint
• Pictures are a step towards interlingularity
• I have so many things I want to communicate
• I always like as many people as possible to be involved in conversations
• we are planning to offer a petcha kutcha session at PLE_SOU
• I am already intrigued by the prospect of an animated herring and a doo-wop band
• I once read that there was space for communicating computer science through the medium of interpretive dance
• I have lots of things I want to communicate ( oh I said that before)

so what are some those things?

• What it is like coming to live in Montpellier
• What I plan to do with my sabbatical
• What I have achieved on my sabbatical
• What we mean by Institution Personal Learning Environments
• How personal learning environments have a place in the web science agenda
• What I think web science is
• What other (ordinary) people think web science is
• What other (academic) people think web science is
• What is happening with semantic technologies in higher education
• The role of visualisation is communicating scientific ideas
• What we are offering to staff, students and the whole university through the Southampton Learning Environment - its not just a system, its a mindset

In addition I want to introduce PetchaKutcha into my teaching - as a discipline to myself (slides at the start of a lecture)

• it will train me to develop my visual thinking skills
• it will help me build up a repertoire of images
• it will introduce students to the idea and practice of petchakucha

I will also get my second year students to choose between a pecha kucha and a three minute poster pitch as a means of presenting their posters to the class
so its a pretty hectic thing ( and it was a lot quicker thinking it than recording it)
you can find examples of pechakucha on youtube and vimeo, and when they become rather boring, you understand the benefit of really getting down to the bare bones. However the best examples are stimulating, creative and highly communicative. Browse, search, observe - I hope, like me, you will try to learn and emulate the best, and hopefully produce some really riviting slide shows ( and of course if you want people to watch them on an iPad you had better make sure you don't record them in Flash!)
now I need to jot down all those images I had in mind...
Footnote:

PechaKucha Night was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public.
It has turned into a massive celebration, with events happening in hundreds of cities around the world, inspiring creatives worldwide. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of "chit chat", it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds. It's a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.
http://www.pecha-kucha.org/

or as Wired would have it

"The result, in the hands of masters of the form, combines business meeting and poetry slam to transform corporate cliché into surprisingly compelling beat-the-clock performance art".
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-09/st_pechakucha