PECHAKUCHA!

“What? What was that? Oh, did you sneeze or cough or hack or something?”

Nope, I just said “PechaKucha!” It’s a real word, and it’s actually the name of an event I attended recently.

PechaKucha (pronounced puh-CHAH’ kuh-CHAH’) is a unique performance where speakers can talk about pretty much anything they want to. They can relay whatever passion or perspective they want to share. There is one catch, however. The program follows a 20-by-20 format, which means each speaker has 20 slides and can only talk about each slide for 20 seconds. In other words, they have to impart all their wisdom in just 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

I learned PechaKucha originated in Japan in 2003. Today, it’s happening in over 1,000 cities throughout the world. Our community has hosted a number of PechaKucha Nights, but for the first time this one was at a historic downtown theater.

Although PechaKucha Nights don’t usually have a particular theme, this event centered around “Making Space for Women.” All 11 presenters were women, and they spoke about various ways they and other women have been present in our communities.

I was a PechaKucha audience newbie. I was curious but had no idea what to expect from the evening. I just knew I wanted to join a group of friends in supporting our friend, Kelly Skinner.

Kelly is the founder of a new business called Soul Care. Its mission is to help others nurture their souls and to connect more deeply with their personal authenticity. Soul Care offers classes, workshops and other resources for spiritual development. Kelly describes it as an urban retreat center.

Explaining it in full, of course, would take more than 400 seconds. So, she zeroed in on one topic, the importance of personal sacred spaces.

Kelly was the first presenter on the program, and I have to admit I was a teeny bit nervous for her. As I imagined myself in her shoes onstage, I felt weak. OK, I admit it. I let my mind get carried away with all kinds of “what-if” scenarios.

What if you talk too slowly and the slides get away from you? How would you catch up? Would you even notice, or would you be too focused on your words to even keep track of the slides? What if your mind went blank or you lost your place? What if, heaven forbid, you had a sudden PechaKucha-like hacking attack in the middle of it all?

It seemed daunting to me, but fortunately, Kelly wasn’t tuned in to my runaway thinking. She delivered her presentation beautifully.

Her topic spoke to where I am in my life. She talked about the benefits of creating a personal sacred space, and she offered suggestions on how to do it. Her words as well as the pictures on her slides offered helpful, creative options.

The presenters who followed Kelly were also good. The topics included personal stories about becoming an activist, developing a business to connect women’s businesses, and body positivity. The women shared their journeys openly, and we all learned a bit about paths different from our own. The uplifting talks included plenty of humor, inspiration and compassion.

“Making Space for Women” bolstered us all.

Those presentations made us all more aware of the amazing things women in our community are doing. More importantly, they helped us realize how each one of us is much more capable than we tend to believe. There is no one path, but when we have a dream or a gut feeling, we owe it to ourselves to act.

Like each of those women, we need to learn to follow our hearts. We should muster the courage to jump into action and follow the adventure.