Phoenix had its first Pecha Kucha night a few days ago. We've had five Ignite Phoenix events. I presented at Ignite Phoenix IV (watch! http://vimeo.com/53518

Phoenix had its first Pecha Kucha night a few days ago. We've had five Ignite Phoenix events. I presented at Ignite Phoenix IV (watch! http://vimeo.com/5351826 http://vimeo.com/5351826). Prior to that I did a Pecha Kucha format talk at a Phoenix Ruby User Group in an attempt to get others to do the same (I failed :( ). Attending the Phoenix Pecha Kucha event I was struck by the differences between the 6:40/20x20 format and Ignite's 5:00/20x15. The shorter slide duration, and overall shorter length of each talk, really seems to matter. It's hard to say for sure, since a good part of this is the quality of any given talk. These are tough formats to use, and require careful planning and much practice. In real life not enough people seem to put in the needed effort. (To be fair, these are all volunteers and are earnestly doing their best. ) Still, despite what should be minor differences, the Pecha Kucha talks seemed to drag. Part of the problem may also have been that the talks were punctuated by speaker transitions and intros. Meanwhile, at Ignite Phoenix, it's become a well-old machine: as soon as one speaker is done, the next is out and slides are rolling within , say, 20 seconds. You end up with much higher information density. Anyone else here give an Ignite or Pecha Kucha talk? Or try some other interesting format?