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I read your site and watched a pecha kucha on pecha kuchas. For my PK, my content and languge needed to be so particular, I ended up writing my whole talk out, like a script and memorized it. Sure, not ideal, but I must share the following of what I learned the hard way:-a slooow, clear speeaker speaks at 100 words per min. PK Create is presentation software that makes it easy to make Pecha Kucha presentations. Sign up for your free Pecha Kucha account.
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A few days ago, our PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff LinkedIn group had a great discussion on Pecha Kucha. It started with one of our members asking for some guidance on how to go about preparing for a Pecha Kucha presentation. To those of you who do not know what Pecha Kucha is, it is a presentation format that originated in Japan in the year 2003. In Japanese, Pecha Kucha translates to chit-chat or chatter. On this page, we will explore the ten best Pecha Kucha tips.
See Also: Ten Easy Topics for Pecha Kucha
Each Pecha Kucha speaker presents with a deck of 20 slides (or images) each. Each of these slides progresses automatically to the next one, after being visible onscreen for 20 seconds. This is the reason why Pecha Kucha is often called 20×20.
That’s a total time of fewer than 7 minutes and explains why most Pecha Kucha slides are more visual than text-laden. Text-heavy slides would take much more time to explain than the allocated 20 seconds, and will also get the audience reading the text rather than giving their undivided attention to the Pecha Kucha presenter.
Picture courtesy: Ric Bretschneider
Getting back to the question about how you can prepare a better Pecha Kucha presentation, the forum responses did bring in some awesome answers. With the permission of those who responded, I’ve compiled this list of 10 tips that will help you prepare for a better Pecha Kucha presentation.
1. Choose a Simple Topic
Many times, presenters get tempted to choose complicated topics that need so many facts to be explained even before you get to the topic. Let’s face it – not everything in this world is simple enough to be explained in less than 7 minutes. But you can simplify your topic, or you can choose another topic that is simple enough to be explained within that time frame.
Once you have chosen a topic, leave out the un-required and focus on your message – you should be able to condense the gist of your entire message in one, simple line. Then elaborate as required.
2. Start With an Outline
As with generic presentations that are not limited to Pecha Kucha’s 20×20 rule, you should start with an outline. You can call your outline a structure, a story, etc. Charles Greene III prefers to call the outline an “analog”. He uses 3 x 5-inch note cards for his main ideas. He restricts to one idea per card, thus each card represents a potential slide. Under each main idea, he jots 3 quick sentences about that idea.
Using cards is a great idea – but if you want, you can even use some paper sheets, PostIt notes, an iPad or tablet, or even Microsoft Word, Evernote, or OneNote. Work with whichever medium makes you feel comfortable, as long as you end up with a rough outline.
3. Tweak Your Outline
It’s now time to reorder the content in your outline. Then remove what is not required – you may also want to combine some parts of the outline into one slide or divide others as required. Whatever you do, think about your audience – you must include what they would like to hear rather than what you want to say.
Charles Greene III adds about how he works with his note cards: “The cards were sorted, shifted and removed until I had my final 20 slides that told my story. Strong visual images were selected to go with each topic. I developed my story flow from the note cards”.
Pecha Kucha Presentation
4. Make Your Slides
You are now ready to import your outline into PowerPoint or any other slide program. PowerPoint can import outlines to create slides, but even if you do not want to import your outline, you can still create slides from your text content.
Most often, your text content will be restricted to your slide titles. You should end up with 20 slides. Play and watch them. Do the slides build up well with your message, one after the other? If the answer is no, then go back and redo them until you are happy. There’s no sense in moving beyond this step unless you are happy with the content and sequencing of your slides.
5. Add Pictures
Add pictures to your slides that are relevant to what you will speak about. Ric Bretschneider, formerly Senior Program Manager for PowerPoint at Microsoft advises: “Pictures! Graphics! Even black slides! Text used sparingly. The most successful Pecha Kuchas don’t use much if any text.”
6. Practice
Then practice as much as you can. And practice again.
Charles adds: “I found that even with the little information that I had chosen to say, it was too much. In actual performance, the flow is very quick. To not have the sense that I was racing toward the 6minute 40-second mark, I had to take out some words. I also had three slides towards the end that covered one topic. This gave me a place where I could “hover” to adjust my timing and flow. I highly suggest a “hover” space.”
Ric adds: “Do practice so you know one or two points that each slide brings to your story naturally. You can perform free-form easy if you know what you absolutely need to include to support your upcoming points.”
7. To Animate or Not?
You’ll have to make a decision about this one; whether you should animate objects on your slide, or not. Also, do you want to use slide transitions? Any animation is a movement, and movement pulls the eye of the audience away from you to the slides. 20 seconds is too short a time for them to refocus on you during that particular slide, and that explains why you must decide whether animation will add value to your slide, or otherwise.
Ric adds: “Do not animate. Aside from potentially messing your timings up, animations are an unanticipated pause in your presentation while another point is disclosed. Your slides are bite-sized enough, use them exclusively for disclosure. OK, that said you can break that rule if you aren’t using the animation to break out talking points, more ambient animation. But even so, challenge the assumption that you need to do that because you do lose the audience a little each time they have to analyze a change to your visual.”
8. Practice Again
Yes, it is time to practice again. With less than 7 minutes to present, you can afford to practice more often. Even if you end up using 2 or 3 minutes more in a Pecha Kucha presentation, that won’t be acceptable or even possible using the format. So you must have time on your side, right down to the minutest level. That sort of sync with your slides can only be achieved with repeated practice.
Charles adds: “Afterthoughts — Practice, practice, practice! That’s the only way to get the presentation to flow like a conversation. Give some “performance” to the presentation. Be a bit dramatic. Add your own personal flair. Hopefully, you are presenting a topic that you care about as your personal love for the subject will make a difference. Oh, did I mention practice?”
9. Love Your Audience
Ric raised a very significant issue, about being human with your audience.
He added: “With all this focus on the mechanical and your presence it’s easy to forget to really talk to the audience. Make contact, converse, be warm, and be human. It’s one of the more intimate presentation styles if you let it be.”
10. Everything Else, and More Pecha Kucha Tips
You already heard about the benefits of practicing but remember to let your free flow work as well — depend 80% on practice and a script, but let the other 20% of being free within a framework also work for you! So in effect, you will know your slides like the back of your hand, but you should be able to move your hands as you like.
Ric adds one last thing: “Find out if your start and end slides are considered part of the pres. Just something to know.” Also, there are lots of videos from Ric’s Pecha Kucha events on the San Jose site. Ric mentioned that Indezine readers in the Silicon Valley are welcome to contact him if they want to try out Pecha Kucha in an upcoming event.
Charles provided a link to his Pecha Kucha presentation on YouTube.
See Also: Preparing for Ignite or Pecha Kucha: Conversation with Yancey Unequivocally | Resonate on iPad: A Book That’s Now Become an Experience
Contents
- Why use an automatic PowerPoint slideshow?
- OPTION 1: How to make a PowerPoint play automatically
- OPTION 2: How to make a PowerPoint play automatically
The powerPoint autoplay feature is an amazing tool to create slide carousels that advance automatically. Self-running PowerPoint presentations are great for leaving in kiosks or publicity booths. And you can even send them with recordings or voiceovers so you make sure your audience gets the most out of it. Forget about worrying and clicking from slide to slide by learning how to make a PowerPoint that runs automatically.
Why use an automatic PowerPoint slideshow?
Delivery is key when going through a PowerPoint presentation. However, having to click to go slide by slide can sometimes be very distracting and even spoil your rhythm. To avoid interrupting yourself, creating a PowerPoint slideshow that advances automatically slide by slide can be a great tool. You’ll be able to focus on what you’re saying without worrying if you’re showing the correct slide or not! For example, a Pecha Kucha presentationworks perfectly with a self-running PowerPoint slideshow.
Learning how to make a PowerPoint slideshow run automatically can also be great for publicity. If you have a kiosk or booth, a self-running PowerPoint slideshow can help you reach more people without them having to speak one-on-one with a salesperson. PowerPoint is a naturally visually appealing tool, and it can be very useful as a “background” of sorts.
You can even use a self-running PowerPoint presentation for when you’re not able to be physically present. Add voiceovers, recordings, and even laser pointer gestures to make sure your audience gets the most out of your presentation. You can use self-running PowerPoint slideshows to send them over or even leave them running on their own for an audience.
PowerPoint automatic slideshow feature
Luckily, PowerPoint’s autoplay feature makes it really easy to create a self-running slideshow. It includes several different options and nuances too, so you can customize your self-running slideshow to make it fit perfectly your needs.
Take into consideration what issues you need to cover. Do you need slides that just work as a background? Or do you need your slides to fit your speech and follow specific times? Do you want them to be just a complement to your presentation? Or should they have a narration in case you’re not present while the slides are running? Depending on these, you can use different autoplay settings to make the best possible fit for you.
PowerPoint autoplay vs slideshow loop
Self-running PowerPoint slideshows can sometimes get confused with looping presentations. But they are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they work perfectly together! An automatic PowerPoint slideshow is a presentation where you don’t need to click to advance to the next slide. A looping PowerPoint presentation is one that once it gets to the final slide, starts all over again from the beginning.
For example, a presentation where you want to focus on your delivery and not on advancing the slides. In this case, you can make a self-running PowerPoint, but you don’t really need your presentation to loop when you’re done. But for a PowerPoint that you’re going to leave running in a kiosk or booth as publicity, then you should probably make it loop! Check out the step by step guide below to learn how to make a PowerPoint slideshow that runs automatically and that also loops.
Pecha Kucha Presentation Template
OPTION 1: How to make a PowerPoint play automatically
Using the PowerPoint autoplay feature is very easy. It also offers a wide array of options for a self-running slideshow. You can add personalized timings, add narrations and recordings, and in short, allow you to totally forget about manually advancing your slides.
1. Slide Show tab > Set Up Slide Show option
This tab will be your best friend for customizing the way your PowerPoint slides advance automatically. On the “Set Up” group, you’ll find the Set Up Slide Show option to start customizing your self-running presentation.
2. Pick a self-running PowerPoint option
Once you click on the Set Up Slide Show option, you’ll get a new window where you will be able to pick different options for a PowerPoint that runs automatically.
Pecha Kucha Presentation University
- Presented by a speaker is the default mode PowerPoint usually starts with. Most likely, all your presentations are already on this setup, where you click or use the keys to advance your slides.
- The Browsed by an individual is one of the options for creating a self-running PowerPoint. It’ll allow you to create a present your slides in a window (not in full screen like it usually does). Your viewers will not be able to advance from slide to slide. Make sure the option “Use timings, if present” is selected for this option to work correctly.
How To Setup Pecha Kucha Powerpoint For Mac Free
- Finally, the Browsed at a kiosk option allows you to make a full screen, continuous slideshow that runs automatically. This option locks in both the loop and the timings option. This means your slideshow will keep on running until you press ESC!
If you’re not sure what option is the best for you, remember you can always select manually the loop and timings option. Try different options with these and try out how your presentation will look like with the different settings.
3. Set your timings
Now that the basic setup is done, is time to set up the timings. This means defining how much time you want your PowerPoint slideshow to spend on each slide before automatically advancing to the next one.
Rehearse Timings will allow you to go through your presentation slide by slide, and it’ll record how much time you spend on each one. Remember that practice makes perfect! If you want your slides to fit perfectly your speech it’s worth it to spend some time and effort making sure your timings are precise.
After you’re finished going through all your slides, a message will pop up to save your timings. You can save it and keep rehearsing with your self-running PowerPoint.
4. If need to, add recordings
Pecha Kucha Examples
You can also use your automatic PowerPoint slideshow for a kiosk where you’ll not be present at all times. If you want to add a voiceover with commentary or explanation on your slides, you can record yourself and your presentation will automatically include them.
Select the Record Slide Show option for working on this. You can also customize if you want to add a recording of yourself with your camera or just your voice. You can even add pen commentary and highlight specific elements. It’ll be just like if you were right there with your viewers!
Finally, remember to try out your presentation before sending the final version. Creating an automatically self-running PowerPoint slideshow is not difficult, but it can take a minute to get used to all its features. Make sure your presentation is looking exactly as you want it to look.
OPTION 2: How to make a PowerPoint play automatically
The PowerPoint autoplay feature has a lot of great options to create a customized self-running slideshow to the nines. But if you need something way more simple, we’ve got you covered too!
This option is great if you just want your slides to advance automatically at regular intervals. If you don’t really need complex voiceovers, laser pointer gestures, and customized timing for each slide, then this option might work well for you. It creates an easy slide carousel that goes slide by slide.
1. Transitions tab
On the Transitions tab, locate the “Timings” group. Here’s where you’ll be working on!
2. Add your slide time
Manually add how much time you want to spend on each of your slides at the After option.
3. Apply To All
Make sure to select the Apply To All option so all your slides have the same timing. This is what will create regular intervals for your self-running PowerPoint slideshow.
You can also deselect the “On Mouse Click” option, depending on if you want to be able to advance your slides normally or not. Don’t forget that if you want your presentation to loop you can also add that manually at the Slide Show tab!
Get your own professional customized PowerPoint slides
These steps will help you make the perfect PowerPoint slideshow that runs automatically. But rehearsing is also key to a successful presentation! In order to get your self-running PowerPoint to perfectly fitted to your speech, there are no shortcuts. Practice is a must for creating a truly outstanding presentation.
If you’re looking to create a presentation that truly wows your audience, you might want to put some time and effort into your presentation design too! Your slides can help you convey professionalism, creativity, and how meticulous and detail-oriented you are. Or, on the other hand, a poor presentation design can make you look lazy, improvised, and careless. How your presentation looks is your business presentation card, and it can deeply influence the impression the audience will get out of you.
24Slides creates custom PowerPoint designs for some of the biggest companies all around the world. You can trust our designers to work on a slide design that will not only convey all your information perfectly but also create a big impression on your audience. Send us your slides and in 24 hours you’ll get a custom PowerPoint design that will certainly remain in your audience’s mind long after your presentation is over!