Guest speakers can’t beat around the bush when they stand up before the audience on Nanaimo’s Pecha Kucha Night.
Architects from across Canada will connect with community leaders at the Shaw Auditorium in the Vancouver Island Conference Centre for Nanaimo’s fourth Pecha Kucha Night, Tuesday (June 7), for ‘Gathering Places: Exploring how we connect people and places through architectural spaces.’
Each event addresses a different topic that everyone, from laypersons to renowned authorities on the topic, can speak on, but there’s a catch. Whoever gets up to speak has to do so under the Pecha Kucha slide-presentation format, which means each speaker gets to talk on 20 slides for a maximum of 20 seconds per slide.
The Gathering Places theme was chosen to coincide with the International Architecture Festival that kicks off Wednesday (June 8).
Speakers will include architectural design experts and those who experience life from within the urban spaces created.
“We really wanted to tie into that and certainly bring in some kind of association to architecture and spaces and they way that those spaces influence our culture and our community and get people talking about that,” said Jackie Duys-Kelly, Pecha Kucha Night organizer.
Pecha Kucha was started in 2003 by two architects in Tokyo who wanted to create a succinct, dynamic format for their colleagues to share their ideas and break from long-winded, tedious presentations.
“The fun part is because all of these speakers come from such different backgrounds … you do definitely end up with people who are absolutely pros, right off the go, and they may not actually be the well rehearsed, experienced speakers, and then there are very well-rehearsed speakers who do public speaking all the time and end up really stumbling on it because they’re used to speaking as long as they want … and we’re asking people to talk about some really deep stuff, not just about how you plant strawberries,” said Duys-Kelly.
The event also includes an art installation by local artist Titia Jetten, a DJ, and a mini exhibition of information and architecture designs from Vancouver Island University’s graphic design students.
Tickets, $11 each, are available through Picatic at www.picatic.com/pknanaimovol4.