PKN MTL vol 01: Success

Matt Biddulph of Dopplr at PKNMTL vol 01I think it’s safe to say that Volume 01 of Pecha Kucha Night in Montreal was a great success. Everybody had a great time, saw something new and interesting, and Boris got to stretch out his stage legs a bit. The full speakers list is up at montreal.pecha-kucha.ca and I’ve put the photos that actually turned out up on my Flickr. It was certainly an educational evening for me as I tried learning my new camera on the fly while keeping an eye on the Keynote slideshow. You can tell which shots were taken later in the evening as I started to figure out the appropriate settings.

Huge props to Boris for all the work in putting this together, the SAT for helping us out on the space, and MocoLoco for sponsoring, and of course the speakers for their presentations. (Also, Boris wants everybody to know that Laika is his second home.)

I started trying to do this because I wanted to attend such an event. Boris’ return to Montreal was perfect timing to get it off the ground and there’s not a hope it would have happened without him. I’ve been slammed with a pre-Alpha then Alpha milestone schedule at work and before I knew it things magically started to coalesce. I tracked down a few speakers, did some promotional work and other odds and ends, but Boris made the magic happen. When it was all said and done I think the speakers felt they had participated in a really solid event, we had a lot of fun, and everybody started talking about the next one right away. Along the way it went from an event I wanted to attend to a thing I can’t imagine not doing.

If you attended and took photos, please tag them with PKNMTL!

Pecha Kucha Night Montreal

A few months ago I heard about Pecha Kucha Night and thought it sounded like an event worth attending. The idea is simple, a show and tell by designers for designers. It uses the broadest possible definition of design so that architects, photographers, print, industrial, fashion etc. designers are included. Everybody shows up and starts socializing, a 5 à 7 atmosphere prevails, and then presenters kick off their talks. 10 to 15 people in an evening get 20 slides at 20 seconds each, so it moves quickly. Even if you’re not terribly interested in one presentation, give it 6 minutes and 40 seconds and another will take it’s place.

Unfortunately there wasn’t a Pecha Kucha Night in Montreal. So I contacted the Pecha Kucha organizers in Tokyo and asked what I had to do to set one up. Knowing that I’d need a partner in crime on this project I twisted Boris‘ rubber arm before he returned from Japan and we were off and running. (Mad props to him for the PKN MTL site)

So, June 14th 7:30pm at the SAT is Volume 01 for PKN Montreal! If you’d like to present ping us at infos -AT- montreal.pecha-kucha.ca otherwise just show up and enjoy.