Pecha-Wha?!?

Last night I went to my first ever Pecha Kucha event here in Boston. You may be wondering what exactly Pecha Kucha is, which is exactly what I was wondering too! In a way, I still am wondering.

It’s been on my radar for quite some time, so I’m glad my schedule finally aligned with this once-monthly event.

The event is an evening hosted at a fun local venue for young designers and creative types to meet, network and share their ideas. The presenters each have 20 slides that they center their talk around, having only 20 seconds per slide. They call this the 20×20 format. It keeps the presentation moving at a good pace. The presentations were surprisingly varied. This evening happened to be co-sponsored by the RISD alumni group, so perhaps there were more RISD alum presenters than usual. Regardless, the presentations were really great. I feel like I have a renewed excitement for design, creativity, fostering new ventures, and sharing ideas.

Even though I work in an architecture firm, I have not had that much interaction with the young design community in Boston. There are something like 45,000 design professionals in Massachusetts, with a large portion of them in the greater metro area. Maybe this number is not 100% accurate, but whatever it is, there are a lot of them in Boston. It was really inspiring to see some of the passions that drive these people and how varied their work is.

Yesterday’s topics/speakers included:

• Bike & Build;
• SHIFT Boston winners;
• an MIT Media Lab guy researching the idea that cell phones are like billions of transmitters with data just waiting to be analyzed;
• one of Remedy Quarterly’s creators;
• one of Ecolect‘s founders, a responsible design resource center;
• a designer who is making improved medical dummies for educating army medics;
• a children’s book illustrator;
• a painter;
• and an architect who does printmaking on the side.

I love when an evening leaves me thinking, feeling energized, and excited about all the new people I met.