Pecha Kucha Post-Game Analysis

Last night’s Pecha Kucha in New Glasgow went really well: we had a good, diverse crowd in the audience and a good, diverse collection of eight speakers.

Things got off to a late start as a late bus tour group was still eating dinner in the dining room that was to be our performance hall at 7:15 p.m. Fortunately our host Bruce MacNaughton stepped up with a great array of food and drink, and we turned the “delay” into a really great social hour. By the time everyone piled into the dining room at 7:30 p.m. everyone was well-seasoned for what was to come.

We were struck with a few technical glitches: Naomi Cousins’s presentation (she was pinch-hitting for her sister Katie) needed to be emailed from Pisquid, which took a while to sort out (it arrived eventually and Naomi gave a really great presentation). And the wifi in the dining room wasn’t up to the task of livestreaming the event on Qik (the access point was too far away).

And the screen was a little too small, the audio needed some tweaking (thanks to Shirley Jay for stepping into this breach!), and the sun setting on the River Clyde ended up shining right on the presentation area for a good 30 minutes or so.

But all that’s just a valuable set of lessons for the next time out.

I was struck, in the end, at home many of the presentations were on the same theme, despite most of the presenters never having met: whether you call it “ecology” or “self-determination” or “listening to your inner self,” almost everyone presented something that skirted around this general theme.

So it was all, I think, a success. Thanks to all the presenters, thanks to the patient audience, thanks to Bruce for the venue (and the food and for presenting his own Pecha Kucha). We’ll do it again.

We did have non-live video taken of the event; still no word on whether it’s of sufficient quality to post online – I’ll try to find this out today. I’ve also asked all the presenters for PDFs of their slides so we can post these online too.