My first Pecha Kucha talk!

I have known about Pecha Kucha for some time and it's been on my to-do list since last year.

I finally booked myself book onto the Birmingham Pecha Kucha night (volume 4) which was held upstairs at The Victoria pub in the city centre.

What is Pecha Kucha? It's a night of presentations that consist of 20 slides/images where you have 20 seconds (if you time it right!) to talk about each one.

Initially I was going to do my presentation on Heartache. Unfortunately I ran out of time to prepare it, so I based my talk on the 4am Project and made it a shorter version of the presentation I gave at the Redeye Photography Network event in Liverpool I gave earlier in the month (that one was about 20 minutes long)

So with a bit of (very) tight editing and highlight selecting I managed to pare it down to about 7 minutes, and I also made some notes on a piece of paper.

It was a really well attended event! Normally when I go to events in Birmingham I already know a lot of faces, but PK night was different. I only knew about half a dozen people or so. A whole new crowd!

I had asked the organisers if I could give my presentation earlier in the evening (then I could sit back and relax).

A weird thing happened though. I suddenly got really nervous! Like butterflies in the tummy kind of nerves. It was a really weird and new feeling and I'm not sure why it happened. I've give presentations in front of strangers and I normally feel really confident. So strange!

The 3 speakers before me did really good presentations. They didn't have any notes with them, so at the last minute I ditched mine and just hoped for the best!

Despite the rare onset of nerves, it all went well and I got a great response, the audience were interested and asked questions afterwards.

I hope you enjoy my first Pecha Kucha presentation.




I'd really recommend Pecha Kucha as a night out. You'll hear interesting talks and meet new people too! And if you are up for the Pecha Kucha challenge, the next Birmingham date is the 20th July! You can also follow PK Birmingham on Twitter.

Say hello on twitter: @karenstrunks