Last night I went to “Pecha Kucha” night, sponsored by AIGA, the professional association for design and I am left full of insights and ideas about the possibilities of this format. Here is a bit on “Pecha Kucha” from Wikipedia –
“The idea behind Pecha Kucha is to keep presentations concise, the interest level up and to have many presenters sharing their ideas within the course of one night. Therefore the 20x20 Pecha Kucha format was created: each presenter is allowed a slideshow of 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds. This results in a total presentation time of 6 minutes 40 seconds on a stage before the next presenter is up. Each event usually has 14 presenters. Presenters (and much of the audience) are usually from the design, architecture, photography, art and creative fields, but recently it has also stretched over to academia and the business world.”
So I’m left wondering, what if we could have a “Pecha Kucha” Night for social innovators, or one on “social technologies” ranging from online practices to group processes? What if IISC used “Pecha Kucha” formats for the learning labs that we design?
But what if we thought beyond a “Pecha Kucha” event and created tight, exciting “Pecha Kucha” presentation as a sort of framing question to set off a circle, dialogue or world café process? We could even bring this technique into the political realm, what if the Arroyo campaign collaboratively developed a presentation that became part of his stump speech?
More ideas come from here, this is a cool presentation format, how could they be combined with “youtube” or “podcasting?” Part of the obstacle to this is how long it takes to find the right images, or to rightsize the videos or podcasts for the limited attention span of our day. So I am wondering about what types of partnerships we could build. I suspect that there are enough creative people out there who could voluntarily help with the editing of such presentations.
How do we crowdsource part of this work? Are there partnerships we could be making with design and architecture schools and associations? Do we not have plenty opportunities for people to jump into and do a little bit of social change work? Would not the aggregate of many small contributions make for a number of very good things? Does this sound promising? Could we not problem solve together about ways to catalyze this sort of creative intervention? What ideas do you have?
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Listening to the Growing Edges
By Curtis Ogden
Scientists and spiritual leaders are both saying it, “Go to the edges.” That’s where new life, hope, and innovation resides. As our institutions and old worldviews crumble, we are called to look to the edges where ingenious adaptations are always happening. We know this is true of ecosystems. When the core is dying, something else is happening at the boundaries where there is greater resilience. When winter hits and all is withered on the surface, something else is beginning to stir underground, sending out new shoots and establishing new roots.
At a meeting with a school system today, participants acknowledged that they are still operating out of an industrial model whose time has long since passed. But this does not mean that there aren’t pockets of vibrancy and innovation. These are found at the edges of the bold experiments and adaptive efforts of teachers and students that often go undocumented. I heard a middle school teacher say, “Ask the teachers about what innovations are already happening in and beyond their classrooms. Just because they have not spread throughout the system does not invalidate them. Teachers have so many creative ideas, so much more that they would like to be able to do that they feel they cannot given institutional constraints.” The call is clearly to follow the energy, give it attention, nurture it, let it be the guide. Then let the structures adjust to accommodate (not assimilate) this energy. Let form follow function . . .
This is what a colleague recently said about the cutting edge of innovation for visual artists - “It’s all about crossing the boundaries of media. You don’t say that you are going to be a sculptor. Instead you start with an idea and let that lead you. Everything is on the table.”
I put this question to our organization, community, country, and world. What is/are our edge/s? What is becoming manifest there? What are those manifestations telling us? Where might they take us? What might they make of us?
Scientists and spiritual leaders are both saying it, “Go to the edges.” That’s where new life, hope, and innovation resides. As our institutions and old worldviews crumble, we are called to look to the edges where ingenious adaptations are always happening. We know this is true of ecosystems. When the core is dying, something else is happening at the boundaries where there is greater resilience. When winter hits and all is withered on the surface, something else is beginning to stir underground, sending out new shoots and establishing new roots.
At a meeting with a school system today, participants acknowledged that they are still operating out of an industrial model whose time has long since passed. But this does not mean that there aren’t pockets of vibrancy and innovation. These are found at the edges of the bold experiments and adaptive efforts of teachers and students that often go undocumented. I heard a middle school teacher say, “Ask the teachers about what innovations are already happening in and beyond their classrooms. Just because they have not spread throughout the system does not invalidate them. Teachers have so many creative ideas, so much more that they would like to be able to do that they feel they cannot given institutional constraints.” The call is clearly to follow the energy, give it attention, nurture it, let it be the guide. Then let the structures adjust to accommodate (not assimilate) this energy. Let form follow function . . .
This is what a colleague recently said about the cutting edge of innovation for visual artists - “It’s all about crossing the boundaries of media. You don’t say that you are going to be a sculptor. Instead you start with an idea and let that lead you. Everything is on the table.”
I put this question to our organization, community, country, and world. What is/are our edge/s? What is becoming manifest there? What are those manifestations telling us? Where might they take us? What might they make of us?
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