Pecha Kucha –A breakthrough for the creative voice of the masses

There’s a moment in the beginning of a PechaKucha Night when you wonder if you mistakenly end up at the wrong show. It happens quite often actually, because for a first-timer, it looks a lot like a TED Talk.

But comparing the two would be like explaining the differences between a red velvet cupcake and a cake pop. While equally delicious, they're nothing alike. On many levels though, PechaKucha (the Japanese word for “chatter”) steals the show.

First of all, there’s almost always booze and snacks involved, and a ticket costs only a few bucks. Second, the mic is handed to regular folks like you and me who want to share a particular story or idea. There’s only one genius rule designed to persuade the wondering human mind: 20 slides worth of presentations, each of them running on the screen for no more than 20 seconds.

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Above all, this no-fuss policy about speakers spurred this format’s popularity. At PechaKucha, an event originally launched in 2003 by Mark Dytham and Astrid Klein, two Tokyo-based architects, nobody gets turned down.

There’s no obligation to prove yourself before coming here by owning a CEO position or being a best-seller author; the status of human being is enough to qualify you as “chatterer”. As the organizers put it “TED is top down, PechaKucha is bottom up!”

From local artists, to stay-at-home moms and even kindergartners in over 800 cities around the world, they all have proudly stepped onto the PechaKucha stages. According to the official website, presentations have been held in any space that can fit in more than a dozen of people. A few examples include homes, bars, churches or universities.

But not even the most welcoming audience can diminish the challenge every speaker faces — cramming his or her ideas in a six minutes and 40 seconds time frame. So they can get really creative. Especially when their imagination is aroused by the prospect of an early Midwest spring.

That was the case of a recent PechaKucha event, which took place on a warmer-than-usual night of March, in a tiny Chicago bar. An assortment of snacks featuring pizza bites and beer sips helped build up enthusiasm among the crowd – a hodgepodge of middle-aged intellectuals and rambunctious millennials.

It was quite a struggle to spot a familiar face in the dimly-lighted room. Small candles placed onto the servers’ trays made them half-invisible, so that at a first glance they seemed like fireflies handing out beverages.

Close to 8 p.m., a raspy voice filled out the bar announcing the first orator of the evening. Paula Douglas, a Chicago professional singer, made a strong impression the second she grabbed the microphone and pointed towards the first photo of her slide show: a broken arm X-ray of her five-year old self.

The 19 pictures that followed revealed a bubbly personality: two stuffed animals (reining to this day in her grown-up bed); a travel in Argentina to learn about wine; playing at washboard, on a whim, while out to have some drinks with friends. Her speech was just as expansive as her long, brown curls. The message, straightforward.

“You're not just one thing, so don't let your name or job define you”, she concluded as the last image, of a sunflower, was being displayed on a huge screen in the middle of the room.

With every orator, the night got more intriguing. PechaKucha’s “sky's the limit” approach to topics made for some random, surprising choices. Something that one would say only around close friends, and even then soften up by a couple of vodka shots.

Melissa Thornley, “a creative alchemist” in her own words, created a jaw-dropping presentation about her belly button. Watching her blow the lid off some personal stuff like an umbilical hernia and a miscarriage, while simultaneously laughing and crying was like drinking a sweet and sour Margarita on an empty stomach. Somehow, she managed to lead the public back to a happy spot, concluding that “we are all here to belly dance our way through life”. Besides raising their glasses, people rewarded her with unison “Hell-yeah”.

But if a PechaKucher’s success measures in standing ovations, than Jyl Bonaguro, a Chicago multi-media artist, should have received the biggest prize.

Jyl Bonaguro

Her speech could have been boring for a lot of reasons, yet she delivered a modern fairy tale. Her soft voice carried the public through an unexpected adventure. Despite crushing photo evidence, it was hard to believe any of it. How this petite, milky white-skinned woman with wavy hair could have possibly hitchhiked across France, in a quest to find the chateau where her theatre play’s heroine once lived? Her mission abounded in challenges. “When I finally got there, the castle was closed. Eventually, a door opened”, she told the public, bursting into laugh.

Turns out, she was onto something big. That voyage inspired the writing of Urania, a brilliant play revolving around Emilie du Chatelet, a French mathematician, physicist and author who lived in 17^th century. 

Shortly after, the script benefited from a stage reading at Loyola University in Chicago, which only made Jyl more relentless in spreading the word about Emilie du Chatelet. A person of many hats herself, she used her presentation time to dust off the memory of a timeless role model for women everywhere.

And that’s the whole point of PechaKucha– to hook us up with ordinary people whose lives couldn't be more different than ours; people we may otherwise never had the willingness or guts to start a conversation. The magic happens somewhere between the fourth and the seventh speech, when participants become antsy to take over the stage. Because they suddenly get that each and one of us is a natural born storyteller.

Four ways moving to another country is like being born all over again

There are a couple of fundamental moments in our development that we don’t find out about until later in life. That’s only possible by scrolling through photo albums of first steps, first words, first bath etc. These firsts are our parents most treasured recollections, but have little to no significance to us.

Despite our best efforts to remember, our brains will bring to the surface nothing more than blurred, often distorted bits and pieces of information. Like the smell of your mom’s sweater as she carried you in her arms or a mental snapshot of dangling toys over your crib.

Some people though, get to have a born-again experience when they move to another country. I am one of them and can tell you right off the bat, that there’s a pretty good reason for not remembering how we surmounted the challenges of human growth. If we were to do it all over again, learning to walk and talk, we would feel vulnerable…self-conscious…Terrified.

That’s exactly what most people go through when they attempt to adjust to a new country. Here’s why:

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1. You have to learn not only the language, but its intonations and social meaning. When I moved to 

Chicago, I thought I had a good grasp of English. I could carry a conversation; that wasn't the problem. What made me cringe every time I opened my mouth was how rigid I sounded. Not much different than a baby spitting words. It took me a while until I figured out that speaking like an American requires relaxing the tongue and throat muscles, while dropping the jaw a bit. With that out of the way, I still had trouble choosing my words. Back home, when someone says “How are you” they expect to hear a detailed report of your day including what you had for breakfast. Here, as I quickly learned after having people avoid me, is this question is just a longer version of “Hi”.

2. You discover novelty in everyday life. I couldn't tell you if I was happy or rather annoyed when my mom exposed me as a baby to the sun light.  But I sure knew the adrenaline rush I had when I had a cocktail on the 95^th floor of the Hancock building in Chicago. Or how stunned my husband and I were to see the Cloud Gate, a bean-shaped mirror sculpture placed in Millenium Park. It was like this part of the world had just risen minutes before and was luring us in to discover its charm.

Retraining your taste buds can be a blessing in disguise. You probably don’t remember transitioning from purees to solid foods, but there is a big chance you cried for your pureed veggie concoctions for the first couple of days. My first morning here, I almost threw away our milk carton after having a small sip because it tasted like dirt to me. Gradually, I grew to love many American food staples I’d never even considered trying such as ribs and S’mores.

3. Get used to your new environment. The snow storms everyone warned me about weren't a deal breaker for moving to Chicago. Romania, my home country, goes through four seasons a year, so I was prepared to brave the hard weather. What really took me by surprise were the tornado-like storms. My first one caught me completely off guard. I was riding a CTA bus, when the sky suddenly got darker and violent rain drops began striking the bus roof, as if they were bullets. In the distance, a lightening show awaited us. When my station came, I ran through puddles like my life was at stake and made it home soaking wet and scared to death. While I couldn't say I got used to such weather events, I did learn to prepare accordingly.

4. Connect with people. Making buddies on the playground or in the daycare must feel like second-nature. How complicated can it be to babble your way into a group of toddlers, maybe even share a half-chewed rubber toy? But when I got my first job with an American company, I almost had a panic attack. My first day was the worst. I kept stammering through conversations, nervous, like a sheep facing a pack of wolves. My head was spinning. “Should I shake hands?” “Do they even do that?” “Don’t stare, don’t stare!” I survived and eventually, trust settled in between myself and my coworkers. They taught me how to connect better with Americans and I became willing to let go of judgments. 

Rediscovering family through Skype

A year ago, I viewed Skype as merely a tool of communication. Today, with over 5000 miles standing between me and all things once familiar, this little gem of technology proves to lessen homesickness, one session at a time.

When my husband and I decided to trade Romania, our small European country, for the glamour of Chicago, there was nothing holding us back. No kids, no loans and, thanks to our upbringings, (I grew up without a father, while his was an alcoholic) no strong family ties. We loved our parents, but not in a “7^th Heaven” kind of way. Instead, there was a mutual agreement to make weekly phone calls and twice a year visits. For years, it worked out just fine.

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But then we moved and all of the sudden, none of these rules applied anymore. Although I wouldn't call it a typical case of homesickness, we did found ourselves longing for familiar faces. So after two weeks of landing in our new country, we gave Skype a shot.

First, we spoke with my mom and her husband. They huddled together in front of the laptop, with beaming smiles, pressing wrong buttons on the keyboard, in an attempt to turn on the web camera. The conversation went smoothly, no awkward silences. They had a lot of question; we had a lot of things to brag about. Our visit to downtown Chicago, buying a car, the arrival of our Green Cards were all examples of our new life in America. When we ran out of things to talk about, my husband suggested a tour of our house. They enthusiastically nodded their heads.

In the same way we would do in real life, before having people coming over, we tried to tidy the one bedroom apartment we rented in Chicago as fast as possible. Mismatched socks, dirty laundry and old editions of Real Simple magazine were crammed into the nearest closet. I even lit up a scented candle to make the living room more welcoming.

But when my husband swirled the laptop around the kitchen, he almost blew our cover by getting dangerously close to a pile of greasy dishes sitting in the sink. I'm pretty sure I had a mini heart attack.

An hour later, as we said our goodbyes, we realized we have had one of the few, if not, the first normal, heartwarming talk with them.

This therapeutic experience got me thinking about how Skype acts like a psychological cushion for millions of people around the world. That web camera is the closest thing to a face to face encounter with our distant loved ones. In some cases, like ours, it’s even better than that. Somehow, seeing each other through 16-inches laptop displays, made us even more aware of the 5000 miles between Romania and Chicago. We were then more inclined to ditch the drama and keep things light and fun. And that’s just the way (online) family time should be.

Going off the beaten path to adjust in a new country

Last year, just before packing my whole life in two blue suitcases and moving from an ex-communist European country to the cosmopolitan city of Chicago, I did what most people would do. Opened my browser and type in “How to adjust to a new culture”. Thanks to some handy tips from Chicago bloggers, I prided myself on knowing both the good and the ugly about my soon-to-be home country. Yet, I was still clueless about how to immerse into the actual cultural American habits.

According to journalists, academics or just regular immigrants from all around the world, in order to fit in America, I had to make local friends, try new foods and learn all about my surroundings.  Later, I realized, they had left out something paramount for anyone who seeks to grasp the habits of a new country. Embracing the quirks - or what foreigners usually see as hiccups - of this society could possibly be the cornerstone of successful relocation. It made me feel like I belong, which in return paved the way for friendships and job offers.

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The first habit my husband and I swore not adopt from our fellow Americans, happened to provide a bonding experience with them once we caved in: hanging out at fast food restaurants.  Sipping a small coffee at McDonalds, every other day on my way to work, helped me let go of many unfair labels I had attached to my fellow residents. 

One of the perks of growing up in a poor country is eating more of what grows out of the ground. Hamburgers were actually an expensive treat from where I came from, so we turned to veggies and fruits as our main source of food. 

But the situation would be much different if I would have spent my entire life in a place where fast food restaurants are as ubiquitous as grass. I started looking past the overweight bodies waiting at the front counter and I saw a different picture. People who don't know differently or don't have time and money to find better ways of nourishment. I noticed people like me, who stretched their coffee as long as they could, in an attempt to warm up while waiting for the bus. Or immigrant couples giggling with their kids over what could literally be the only happy meal of the week. These fast food places are no doubt, harming their physical health. But avoiding them, might rob newcomers of a great sense of social acceptance.

The same thinking applies to yoga pants. “Lazy” and “sloppy” were popping into my mind when I saw women wearing them basically everywhere. That was before I entered the workforce. Being a part-time server meant I had to be comfortable with throwing my clothes away after my laundry detergent could no longer remove the three cheese soup or ranch dressing stains. Or that I would need to move like Speedy Gonzales for hours on end. The last thing I wanted was to have a waistband digging into my muffin top. Stretchy, dark-colored and cheap, these pants have now become an essential piece of my daily wardrobe. 

Every night, they are replaced with sweatpants, as my husband and I plop down  in front of the computer and proceed to do another thing ranked high in “Top Ten Worst American Habits”: binge-watching Netflix. This one, we don’t do it to blend in. We just like it.