Giving a Pecha Kucha Presentaion

 

When I was introduced to the concept of a “Pecha Kucha” presentation, my mood turned from splendid to rather annoyed. Seeing as I don’t like giving presentations in general, the prospect of having to get accustomed to a new type of presentation did very little to brighten my mood. I was lucky to be allowed to choose my presentation pal because Vanessa is probably the only one who can bear my incessant nagging about how much I dislike giving presentations.

Vanessa and I didn’t find a topic for our presentation right away. In fact, most of our fellow students had already picked their topics while we were still racking our brains about what to choose. Thanks to Vanessa though, we succeeded in finding an awesome topic. She showed me an article she found in some newspaper or magazine which talked about multilingualism in Luxembourg. The decision was easily made, seeing as we knew nothing else we could possibly talk about.

After having agreed on the scope of the topic, we started researching right away. The sources we found were useful as well easily understandable and for that reason research took up little time.  Vanessa might disagree on that but I think that doing research was the least time-consuming and least annoying part of the preparation process.
Someone who also played an essential role in the preparation process and therefore definitely needs to be mentioned in this post is Selma. Selma is a student from Luxembourg who currently attends university here in Graz. We sent her an email and asked if she’d like to meet up with us. She agreed and helped us add the finishing touches to our presentation by translating certain English phrases into Luxembourgish and by teaching us how to say them. 

When it came to preparing ourselves for the presentation, I have to admit that I did better than I thought I would. I succeeded in learning my whole presentation by heart and only wrote certain key phrases or the first two or 3 words of different sentences down. When the fateful day was finally upon us, I was nervous nonetheless. Altogehter, I think we actually did a decent job though. We worked very hard to succeed in timing our presentation perfectly and the effort paid off in the end.

When it was all over I realised that it was only half as bad as I had expected it to be. It was less time consuming and nerve wracking than I anticipated. Still, I don't particulary enjoy this kind of presentation because it puts you under a lot of pressure. You NEED to say the things you prepared for every single slide  in exactly 20 seconds (no give or take!). If you talk to slow, you can’t continue on speaking because the next slide appears on the screen and it is your partner’s turn. Both Vanessa and I worried about this particular aspect of the presentation for WEEKS because we felt like it was just bound to go wrong. In the end,  we received pretty good feedback from our fellow students though, which proves that we did quite a decent job and that it was all worth the effort.