Pecha Kucha, Sheffield: Enthusiasm

Last night, I gave a short talk at Pecha Kucha Sheffield.

It was the second one in this city, bringing together an odd mix of creatives, interested audience, and the usual marketeers who you can feel oozing off the walls. That’s fine, though, they’re there to capitalise on the creatives.

There were seven talks in total loosely under the banner of ‘Enthusiasm’. A quite interesting (but too wide) talk about sound peaked above sprawling looks into signs, product design, sci-fi, and someone talking through a portfolio of design from when they were the zeitgeist.

I haven’t spoken in public for the best part of five years. This was a way of putting me outside of my comfort zone and testing myself. It was quite enjoyable and well received from what I could gather. I’m not sure that I said all the things I intended to say, but that’s fine.

The brief outline:

Enthusiasm is dying because of sensory overload.

We’re not built to process that much information.

Our emotional responses are becoming inadequate.

The “Like” button is changing our responses to a binary yes/no or up/down.

Everything will be designed for liking, not inspiring.

Friction is not being built into our social or emotional interaction.*

Do something without compromise: be ugly & provoke emotional responses.

* with apologies to James Boardwell.

Of course, in just under seven minutes, it’s difficult to have a measured and balanced talk that isn’t full of rhetoric. I think the format is ideal for short screeds, or overviews of one idea. It’s certainly good for pinpointing something and picking at it until it is just the core principle of the idea.

These are the slides I made for my talk:

(Yes, I was the first to Like it on Slideshare.)

And here are some scrawled notes rife with internal logic and missing synapses: