Week Six: Resource Reflection
Readings:
(There’s no specific material for the readings this week, so I’m reflecting on my experiences of using the Pecha Kucha website)
Reflection: One of the aspects of this week’s use of the Pecha Kucha website is its capacity to dig deep on best-in-class examples. Many of these examples are very polished in their delivery, but I think it’s also really important to not lose a degree of approachability and humanity in adhering too closely to the template structure. It’s in the pauses, the jokes, the moments where the timing doesn’t quite line up, that we see that its a real human delivering their thoughts, and I think it’s really key that the structure does not become a robotic crutch for connecting with an audience. There’s obvious efficiencies in the format, ones which I will certainly carry forward, especially in dealing with executive stakeholders short on time. But it’s also key to make sure we hold room for our own voices within that, and to ensure that the format only becomes a framework into which we pour our work, and not that it becomes the work itself.
Videos:
(There’s no specific material for the videos this week, so I m reflecting on my experiences of using the Pecha Kucha website)
Reflection: A piece of guidance I was able to implement was the recommendation to keep text to a minimum. In my own presentation, I originally had laid out all the slides with individual titles, but as the process evolved, and by the time I had created my ‘first cut’ of the project, it had become clear that the only person the text was helping was me. In removing them, it allowed the content (in my case the videos of my projects at Penn) to ‘breathe’ a lot more, and to create more space for them to shine. It’s a different approach from what I’m used to, which can tend towards being very descriptive. But by moving the descriptions into brief voiceovers, I moved the complexity to what I was saying rather than what I was showing. This not only reduces the cognitive load on the viewer, but helps them to prioritize my words, and support these thoughts visually in a much more impactful, simpler, and more direct way.
