PechaKucha at ideaSPARK: Behind The Scenes

PechaKucha Night at ideaSPARK on September 16^th, 2010 was by far the biggest and most seamless PKN to date. With 14 presenters—out of about 26

Me and Alex Gibson (our emcee) at the PKN after-party celebrating 1 year in Raleigh

submissions—and a packed room of about 200 attendees (out of the over 300 that registered), the fact that it’s popularity had seemed to doubled overnight was sort of obvious.

While I expected the PK night during SPARKcon to be a more popular event, I was completely unprepared for what actually happened. I predicted that recruiting speakers would be a much less laborious task as they would all just fall right into my lap and POOF there would be our lineup.

Except we got WAY TOO MANY submissions and ended up having to come up with a criteria for accepting some presentations over others, and then actually going through the decision process, and then actually letting everyone know they had been accepted, you know, or not. I learned that I’m really good at being rational, fair, and not letting my personal feelings get in the way too much, but I also learned that I hate telling people bad news (especially to people I like a lot).

Oh, and as far as filling the space, we were offered this lovely new space by KINGS that would fit far more people than previous events so I thought that would be a no-brainer too, expecting that say, if double the number of people show up to PechaKucha at ideaSPARK then we still wouldn’t even hit the space’s capacity.

I was wrong again. The event sold out (of 250 tickets, which was capacity) more than two weeks before the event and by the night before the event there were over 50 people on the wait list to get tickets. And then there were the 30+ last-minute VIPS (aka SPARKcon sponsors that donated oh say… $10,000 or something), press, and SPARKcon organizers and all their friends that wanted to come too. We didn’t even have to do any marketing because the tickets were already sold out! Not a bad problem to have, but still a problem. Somehow by analyzing every ticket order and maneuvering the guest list in just the right way I managed to get everyone on the list that were promised to get in.

I’ll be honest (and not modest at all), I’m incredibly impressed with myself for pulling it all off practically seamlessly without any real experience to lean on. I truly think this whole problem-solving, thinking on your feet, working under stress, and planning every minute detail thing is really my thing. Sure, I had some people to help me out (namely my partner in crime, my mom—which in itself is a whole other topic of discussion—and Janet Stracke, whom I’ve come to love dearly over the past 6 months working with her), but I really think of this event as my baby.

So nobody can say we didn’t put a lot of thought, effort, and time (because I seriously spent at least 40 hours making sure everything was perfect in just the 3 days prior to the event) into creating a pleasant and memorable experience for all of our speakers and guests.

I will be the first to admit, however, that there was definitely something missing at the last PechaKucha. I’m not exactly sure what it was. It could have been the larger audience, the different mixture of people in the audience, the presentations themselves, or maybe just the lack of free alcohol as many mentioned in jest, but in actuality could have a very serious affect on the audience’s mood. At first I was a little saddened that none of the presentations made me cry (or pee my pants from laughter) as they did at PechaKucha #3 in Durham, but then I realized that every event is going to be different. If they were all the same what would be the point of going? Of course every speaker isn’t going to leave a lasting impression on you, but hopefully at least someone does, and in that case that’s all you came for. Heck, after all, it’s free—how much more can you ask for?

What did I really think of the presentations though?

There were some that really hit me on a personal level (Katherine Droujkov, Justin Goeres, Chris Sopher, Jay Dolan, etc.) while I found others’ missions and goals really important to helping Raleigh and the surrounding Triangle thrive as a creative hub of the south (Ashley McClelland, Paul Reimel, Dave & Kim Turnage, Design Kompany, etc.). I expected the unexpected, and that’s what we got.

Overall the feedback received was almost all positive (hey, I can’t make everyone happy no matter how hard I try…). Most people provided us with suggestions for the future and I plan on taking into consideration each and every comment. PechaKucha has such an amazing community following and I fully expect this to continue to be an event for that community.

You can view all of the presentations on the www.pknraleigh.com website soon, including their slides (thanks for Kelly Stracke for videotaping the event and getting the videos to us so quickly).

Mark your calendars now for our next event on December 2^nd. If you’re thinking about submitting an idea to present, please email pknraleigh@gmail.com and we’ll chat!