Pecha Kucha Nights: an Analysis of 10 Performances

Abstract

A new way of presenting has been invented under the name of Pecha Kucha, an innovative presentation format. As in traditional presentations, the message has to be clear and well presented. For this reason, there are some modes apart from the message itself which need to be part of the speech. This new format is used in many fields, but the most popular are the business field, the educational field and the Pecha Kucha Nights. The last ones are events in which people from different backgrounds meet and take turns to present a Pecha Kucha presentation with the only purpose of deliver or listen to a presentation about different topics. In this study, a total amount of 10 Pecha Kucha Night presentations are going to be analysed. Each presentation varies in terms of content and topic, but they all last 6 minutes and 40 seconds. The presenters’ behaviour is going to be observed. Three elements are going to be analysed in terms of multimodal resources used by the presenters. These elements are: a) gaze; b)gestures; and c) movements. The results are not conclusive because of the number of participants used, but they can serve as a guideline for future research. Some pedagogical remarks will be suggested at the end of the study.