“Not You”

Posted: June 27, 2018

For more than a few years now, I’ve been attending the Calgary editions of a speaker series called PechaKucha. The premise is straightforward, keeps the presentations concise, and the evening fast-paced. Each speaker has exactly six minutes and 40 seconds which is the total time that it takes their 20 slides to display for 20 seconds each. The Calgary “chapter” (just one of over a thousand worldwide) also chooses to give each night a simple theme.

While I have been an audience member many times, this past season I was also involved heavily in the production side through my work with RocketHouse. Of all the work that the position required, I’m most proud of the new video monitoring system I developed. It gives the speakers an enhanced view of their slides so they always know exactly where they are in their presentations. I’m very glad to have created that new system because for the final show of their ninth season I was asked to also be one of the speakers. (That didn’t remove me from my technical responsibilities, however.)

The theme of the night was “Not.” All of the speakers, myself included, had to find a way to incorporate that theme into their talks. There was a wide variety even within that very simple theme (including one presenter who has a PhD in knots). I chose to talk about rejection, or, to stay on theme, every time I’ve heard the phrase, “not you.” That’s all I’ll mention about it because you watch the full presentation with the embedded slides in the video below.

If it’s a format that you enjoyed you can learn more about upcoming Calgary PechaKucha nights by visiting their website. While there you can also nominate speakers that you think might be a good fit for the format (even yourself). Their next season resumes in September and I know I’ll be there making sure that future presentations go well.