Pecha Kucha: An Alternative to the boring PowerPoint

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Anyone who has attended a corporate event has experienced the grinding boredom of a seemingly endless PowerPoint. It’s an experience that has inspired a new way of presenting, a new kind of event: moving away from hour-long lecture-style presentations and toward an interactive, engaging atmosphere. The prime example: Pecha Kucha, which is Japanese for “the sound of conversation.”

Pecha Kucha is a simple presentation format, showing 20 images for 20 seconds each totaling 6 minutes 40 seconds. The images are presented without text, meaning the presenter must speak to each image instead of reading off the screen. The slides advance automatically, forcing the presenter to create a choreographed presentation that is concise – and ideally, compelling.

Creating Memorable Business Presentations

The reasons behind the success of Pecha Kucha are no mystery. According to a recent study from the National Training and Learning Institute, attendees retain only 5% of what is heard in lecture-style presentations. In contrast with traditional, long-form PowerPoint presentations, the Pecha Kucha length and style is much easier on the brain. Pecha Kucha creates a highly entertaining atmosphere and generates awareness to stimulate thought and action on the subject presented.

Pecha Kucha Nights started in Tokyo in 2003 and are now happening in more than 600 cities around the world. These informal and fun gatherings attract a diverse range of creative people as both attendees and presenters, from sculptors and musicians to chefs and architects, to event professionals.  The presentations tend to lean toward personal moments of enlightenment or important causes and are not always directly about a specific “work” related issue.

As you embark on your next round of business event planning, call or contact TCG Events. Our expert event planners can help you incorporate the fun, fresh concepts of Pecha Kucha!

How to Use Pinterest for Events

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Pinterest: A Great Way Source of Inspiration

So you’re charged with planning an event and you are drawing a blank on the overall vibe, color scheme, décor and other visual logistics. Maybe you just wrapped up an event and would love for your clients and attendees to see the highlighted photos. Pinterest to the rescue!

Pinterest is a very useful visual discovery tool that can help you get unstuck in planning, feature past events and much more. It offers the wonderful ability to scroll through millions of images for inspiration or upload your own. You, along with the over 70 million other Pinterest users can create boards by “pinning” images and can then share your ideas with others.

7 great ways to use Pinterest for your events

  1. Follow key influencers and visit often to fuel new inspiration and ideas.
  1. Create boards for each piece of the event to help with conceptualization and planning your event. For instance, dedicate one board to décor, another place settings, another lighting, favors, etc. You can then share these pins with others directly from Pinterest or keep the boards private. Keep in mind if you’d like the board to be private, choose this option when creating the board as existing items may have already been re-pinned from your board!
  1. You can use boards to showcase and promote your event. For instance, you could have a board specifically focused on your event’s speakers. You can link photos to a corresponding website for more information.
  1. By posting photos from events that recently took place, clients and others can see snapshots from the event and what a success it was and share with others, increasing the viral effect.
  1. Posting photos from last year’s event can create and build excitement for this year’s and give prospective attendees an idea of what to look forward to.
  1. Looking to provide sponsors extra value? Create a board reflecting their products and services.
  1. The destination is often the focal point of an event. You can create boards to showcase specific things to do and see in your host city. This can be a great way to build excitement and promote an event in a unique way.

Five Things to Know When Planning a Hotel Event

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Planning A Hotel Event

Hotels can be wonderful places to hold an event.  Many are designed to meet every conceivable guest’s need, and come with a bevy of resources and staff. However, as with any venue, a hotel event requires thorough planning with an eye on costs. Knowing what to look for before you sign that contract, and knowing what is reasonable to ask, can help put many concerns to rest – and leave you free to focus on running a fantastic event!

  1. Hotel Event Room Rental Fee: Don’t always assume that you need to pay a rental fee!   Hotels will often waive or adjust this fee with food and beverage minimums, as well as the timing of events.
  2. Food and Beverages: Don’t be afraid to ask for discounts! Always ask about available packages (don’t forget to break these down to ensure that they really provide value). If you have an all day meeting, don’t pay by beverage consumption. The hotel will charge you throughout the day for gallons of wasted coffee, decaf and hot water.  Ask for an all-day beverage break as this price will generally reduce your costs by a third.
  3. Events with Sleeping Rooms: If your date is flexible, ask if there are any “need dates” promotions, as these can often result in lower room rates along with food, beverage and Audio-Visual (A/V) discounts.
  4. Parking: Especially when the hotel is a city property, parking is a top concern. Ask for a reduced rate for all attendees, as many times this rate is lowered by $8 to $10 per car per day
  5. Internet: For sleeping rooms, have the lowest band width put into the rate. For meeting space, ask to have the fee waived; if the hotel is not willing to do that, then only pay a one-time fee rather than per day/per connection

End Snoring During Speeches

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You’ve done all of the in-advance work, planned your corporate or non-profit event down to the minute, gotten everyone seated, and dimmed the lights. It’s time for the speeches to begin. What’s the worst that could happen?

How about a seemingly never-ending cavalcade of VIPs, honorees and speakers, all taking too long to say what sounds like the same thing, one after the other after the other?

Instead of feeling compelled to follow the expected speaker’s format and risk having the audience tune out, give these ideas a try at your next event. Both your attendees and speakers will thank you!

Speech, speech! Or how about, no speeches when presenting awards? If possible, replace thank you speeches with a brief bio of each award recipient. The MC can deliver these as winners come up to receive their awards. If an absolute must-have, tell honorees in advance they’ll only have time to offer a quick word of thanks. Make sure they know an Academy Award winner-length acceptance speech isn’t necessary.

“And now a word from our sponsors.” Giving event sponsors the floor for what seems like forever isn’t engaging or inspiring for anyone. Do the math – 5 sponsors x 5 minutes each = 25 minutes of “I’m here, I support this cause, here’s how…” Instead invest in a two-minute, professionally-designed, powerful video that includes major sponsors. Then play it on a big screen during the event. Reducing the number of speeches attendees have to pay attention to makes time management for your event much easier. And everyone wins: the sponsors, your organization, and most importantly, the audience.