Telling a story 20 x 20: have you heard of Pecha Kucha?

Have you heard of Pecha Kucha? It started in Japan and means, more or less, "chit-chat." It's an evening during which a number of speakers talk about their work or their ideas and are limited to 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide. It's similar in some ways to TED but shorter (it comes to just under 7 minutes per speaker as opposed to 20 minutes at TED and, unlike TED, speakers can be anybody). 

There are Pecha Kucha chapters in 318 cities, although the frequency of the event varies (there hasn't been one in London since late February and the last one in Southend-on-Sea was a year ago). It sounds like fun and a good challenge. Sarah Jane Semrad, one of the organizers of the Dallas chapter of PK told dmagazine, "What’s gained is an all senses explosion of a topic.  Twenty visual slides is a lot.  Twenty seconds per slide is, simply put, not.  Combining these two constraints with a variety of topics is great fun."

You can find out more at the home site: www.pecha-kucha.org. But it also strikes me as potentially a very good way to organize a pitch of a project you are presenting to someone. In some cases visuals are not generally used (e.g., pitching a screenplay idea) but even without them, the idea of organizing your pitch into 20 sections, each one no more than 20 seconds, could be very useful.

(If you're thinking about writing a book, you can get guidance from my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey. If you'd like to be more creative, you'll find 100 ways in my other book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Pearson. Both are available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers.)