Pecha Kucha Night Vancouver vol. 16

Last week, I attended my first Pecha Kucha Night Vancouver and was completely blown away by the number of passionate people in the city. Pecha Kucha is a style of presentation: 20 images, 20 seconds, resulting in each presentation being approximately 6 minutes and 40 seconds. It keeps presentations short and concise and keeps the momentum going from presenter to presenter.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect. In many ways I thought it would be like TED talks, which I absolutely love. The line up of presenters sounded really interesting and I was looking forward to seeing and hearing what they all had to share.

I was in awe of Joseph Wu‘s presentation. He is an origami artist, and while I know how to make some simple things, they’re nothing compared with the things that he can create with just a simple sheet of paper. He has been commissioned by various advertising agencies and even the Canadian government to make pieces. His presentation was an inside look into all things origami and about how he has managed to take a passion of his, as simple as folding paper, and turn it into a business. Check out his Flickr stream – craziness!

Another powerful presentation was one from Katrina Pacey from Pivot Legal Society who spoke passionately about her experiences in the Downtown East side. She spoke of a very controversial topic: prostitution and their struggle to achieve basic human rights. Her presentation was very thought provoking and raw. You could feel that the whole room was enveloped in the story that she was unraveling with each photo.  Another individual that was passionate about what she was doing and making her voice heard.

source: ned tobin

Finally, my favourite presentation of the night has got to be from Carson Ting, Art Director of Rethink by day, and founder of Chairman Ting Industries by night. He spoke of his processes of producing his design work. Using both video and still images, he was able to share a behind the scenes glimpse into what he does. His name for the process? Creative Transparency! It was especially interesting for me as this is an industry that I would love to get into and being able to see what one person does in a traditionally private industry provided great insight. There are so many ways of doing the same thing, it was nice to see what someone else would do in a particular situation. You can see and read about his presentation on his blog. His last image was one of him preparing his presentation for the evening:

source: @yads

Here are some tweets from the evening that I created using the new Storify:

And finally, the info for the next Pecha Kucha night! Definitely check it out if you can! Its such an amazing experience. I left that evening extremely inspired and excited about embracing my passions!