When we arrived at Frujch for Pecha Kucha, you can sense a totally different atmosphere than usual. Frujch was filled with professionals from the creative industry (and there were a few students like me). Before the presentations even started, you can already sense their creativity through the chatter, their outfits and of course the plastic eye-glasses with the funky hair.
Overall, the presentations that night were entertaining (except for a couple) and informative. My favorite from the night was the presentation by Graham Perkins, a consultant, who talked about creativity and the education system. He presented first about a topic that was relevant to the audience. More importantly, he was the only one that stuck to the 20X20 format of Pecha Kucha. Like the way it should be done, he timed his slides to transition every 20 seconds and he adapted what he was going to say to that constraint. I was impressed with the design of his slides so I went to Google him and found out that his career was surrounded with creativity from Adobe down to MTV Asia. Kudos to Graham for presenting Pecha Kucha the right way.
HJGHER somewhat followed the 20×20 format but I’m not sure if each slide lasted 20 seconds. I’ve to review that from the video that I took. They presented a well-written short story accompanied by photographs which made it look like a semi-short film. It was probably my second favorite and it was a nice way to end the night as they presented last.
Andrew Lo from MTV Asia was the most entertaining that night because of his personality and his courage to present the reasons why he hates MTV. Although I think that he should have stopped after his last point and chose not to present about MTV’s campaigns because it completely went off topic and he kinda lost the audience then. (Oh yeah! When I first saw this guy, I thought he looked really familiar. Found out later that he was the guy behind the Spot the VJ campaign which I saw the making of on TV.)
Steve Lawler’s (not the DJ) was visually stimulating. He’s a very talented guy and it was nice to learn about the inspirations behind his work. He fascination with Stanley Kubrick is something worth remembering.
The rest of the presentations were just alright. I felt that they were presenting too much about themselves and their work. Even though Pecha Kucha Nights let you present on any topic, it would be nice to watch a presentation and learn something new. Not something that we can just read off the About page on their website. This is why Graham Perkins was the best of the night: everyone in the audience listened to “ideas worth spreading”. (His presentations reminded me of TED Talks, which he made several references to.)
To sum it up, the first Pecha Kucha Night Singapore was a success! Can’t wait for the next one. I’ve got all the presentations on this Kyte channel. Enjoy!
