[Air-L] i have to share.... [aka: why we need to introduce fun talks to our conferences]

[Marianne van den Boomen]

In my classes I work with the so called Pecha Kucha format for students' 
presentations: 20 slides, auto-forward, 20 seconds each. So no more than 
6:40 for each presentation! Amazing how this improves not only the 
design of PPT (no more boring text slides with dull bullets) but also 
the focus of the argument and the debate in class. See 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecha_kucha
Works on conferences and party-like Pecha Kucha nights as well...

Marianne

On 9-3-11 6:52, danah boyd wrote:
> At the Digital Media&  Learning conference, we decided to host Ignite talks (5 minutes, slides auto-forward).  One of our speakers failed to show up (which we later learned was because he was ill).  Lacking a presenter and not wanting to redo our deck last-minute, we asked Alex Halavais to do Powerpoint Karaoke.  In short, Alex was asked to jump on stage and give an impromptu talk to a set of slides that he had never seen before.  While the entire talk wasn't captured on film, a decent amount of it was:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqmJoIS29F4
>
> As we all know, Alex is a lovable huggable and HYSTERICAL person so I spent the entire five minutes crying with laughter.
>
> Now... why am I telling you this other than to embarrass Alex?  Ignite talks were the highlight of the conference.  And Alex's rendition of one topped all charts.  People were excited and energized. Shaking up the speaking structure radically changed the tenor of the conference.  I know many of you out there are planning conferences (including AOIR).  Can I strongly encourage you to shake it up some?  I mean, we're academics... we all love to give long drawn out talks that go 10 minutes over the allotted time.  But constraints have value.  And they add value.  They force people to really bring energy to the table and think differently about how they present information.  And Ignite talks get an audience super engaged, giving them a sampler of awesome research.  And even when they don't like one talk, they just wait 5 minutes and have a new talk to munch on.
>
> If anyone wants to think about adding a new format to their conference, I'm happy to give a run-down of what we did at DML.  But please, for the fun of all (and to contribute to my ongoing effort to turn Alex into a full-fledged improv comedian), can I encourage y'all to consider adding Ignite (or Powerpoint Karaoke) to the schedule?<grin>
>
> danah
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/
>

-- 


met vriendelijke groeten,

Marianne van den Boomen




Media and Culture Studies | University Utrecht
Office: Kromme Nieuwegracht 20 (room T2.13A)
Mail: Muntstraat 2a | 3512 EV UTRECHT
Phone: +31 (0)30 253 9607
M.V.T.vandenBoomen at uu.nl | www.hum.uu.nl
www.newmediastudies.nl | www.vandenboomen.org