20-seconds to tell your life’s story

What if you had a chance to display 20 images from your daily life with only 20 seconds to describe each picture? Sounds like a challenge but Asif Khan, organiser of PechaKucha_Nairobi, begs to differ. “What seems like a short span of time is put to great use and the audience always goes home with a brilliant grasp of the subjects,” he says.

Pecha Kucha, Japanese for ‘chit-chat’, is a concept developed in 2003 in Tokyo, Japan. Architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham created the event as a way for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. The popularity of the event has since spread to 381 cities including Kenya.

“I studied in Japan for a year and after attending a Pecha Kucha night in Tokyo, I loved it and thought that it would be great in Kenya,” says Khan. In 2008, he partnered with KenyaBuzz and organised the first PechaKucha_Nairobi night at the RaMoMA Art gallery. Since then the event has attracted people as diverse as the members of fashion e-zine Stingo, students, graffiti artists and engineers, including Khan himself.

“We plan to waive the entrance fee so that more people will attend the first of possibly four PechaKucha_ Nairobi events this year at the iHub,” he said. Find out more at http://www.pecha-kucha.org