Giving Pecha Kucha

This Pecha Kucha presentation was given by a woman named Jennifer Bolton, an auctioneer at Allegria Auction at a Pecha Kucha event in Seattle. Her presentation was on "giving", and every presenter had a different topic that they had to make into this form. Since hers was "giving", she told three stories about three different people who gave something to a complete stranger. One man provided someone with a ride to and from a gas station when their car broke down in the middle of no where, one man gave a child a pair of shoes, and one woman worked very hard to return something that did not belong to her. The presenter used these as examples of the positive impact we can have on others by giving. Her audience was obviously those at the event, but on Youtube, the video is tagged as "nonprofit and activism". Her audience is basically anyone who will listen, who she then hopes to inspire to give freely to others.

The form in this presentation is interesting--it seemed a little off with certain slides lasting a little longer than 20 seconds, and the presentation was around 9 minutes instead of 6:40. I don't know if she used more than 20 pictures or just talked about them for more than 20 seconds, but some of them did seem a little long. It did not seem like every single image in her presentation had a purpose that was specifically serving her argument in one way or another. After using some concrete examples and pictures to portray those, she also threw in some random ones of certain "giving" situations in order to continue her previous thoughts for longer than 20 seconds. While this wasn't a horrible thing to do, she could have found some way to get to the point she was trying to make sooner rather than having these "filler" images. There were no sound effects or music to go along with her presentation, and since she wasn't shown on screen, I could not tell if the pauses in her speech were for effect, mistakes, or if she was overcome with emotion. Sometimes, it felt like the latter, which was awkward. If that was not the case, then she just did a poor job transitioning at some points, whereas other transitions were perfect. She also did not mention that she was an auctioneer until 7:44 into the video, which is already over the allotted time, and that was evident. The stories about giving were nice, but the middle really lagged. Because of this, when she actually introduced the reason why she was brought to the event in the first place, it felt rushed and out of place. Her main purpose was to encourage benefit auctions as a means of giving back the way that the other people in her presentation did. That is why the stories were beneficial, but since the broader statements about what giving means seemed unnecessary when they were not directly connected to her purpose as she went along.

For my own presentation, I would hope to use the storytelling technique like she did, either to open the presentation or scattered throughout it. Stories usually grab people more than straight facts. I think that it also helps people to apply ideas to real life situations, so that the topic does not seem distant and incomprehensible. Maybe switching off between different stories and different issues would be helpful and beneficial to the organization of my argument. I’m not sure yet if bending some of the rules would be helpful, but I think that incorporating sound other than my own voice might be good for the presentation. Who wants to hear me talking for that long? Since baseball has such a rich media history, I would like to incorporate some of that into the presentation. That is the reason that people want to come play it so badly—because they can see players on TV, listen on the radios, and read about them in newspapers. I don’t know how I would do this yet, but it will come to me eventually.