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• Local artists, chocolate, whiskey and a Project Runway competitor

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Pecha Kucha Night: Champaign-Urbana Vol. 3 »

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• Canopy Club »
  708 S. Goodwin Ave. Urbana, IL 61801
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The Champaign-Urbana Design Organization will be presenting its third PechaKucha Night this Friday at the Canopy Club. PechaKucha — pronounce peh-chak-cha — is the onomatopoeic Japanese word for “chit-chat,” which is exactly what the event encourages. Each artist performing in a traditional PechaKucha Night presents his or her passion in a quick, six minute and 40 second slide show. This season’s PechaKucha night will host 12 presenters, among them being local artists, a chocolatier, a whiskey enthusiast and former Project Runway competitor Ping Wu.

The typical format for a PechaKucha night sees that each artist gets the opportunity to present 20 images that can appear on the the screen for 20 seconds at a time, and between presentations, there is a mandatory beer break. This format was created by PechaKucha pioneers Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham, who were inspired to create a quicker presentation format after sitting through long, boring architecture and design presentations.

“Generally people have a short attention span for these things,” said CUDO co-founder Maya Fruck. “You know, if you don’t like the presentation, in 20 slides, it’ll be over.”

The PechaKucha spirit caught on quickly after its Japanese debut. Currently there are more than 300 cities around the world that have been granted the official “handshake” to host these events, Champaign-Urbana being ­— appropriately — the 217th city to ever host the event, as well as the first small town to become a part of the tradition.

Even though Champaign-Urbana is a small city, its PechaKuchas are rivaling those hosted by larger cities, such as Chicago. Since September 2009, when CUDO hosted its first PechaKucha Night, the event has become very popular. On its first night, 350 people were lined outside of the Canopy Club to see the presentations. The second batch of presenters attracted about 400 people. This time CUDO is expecting about 500 people to pack the Canopy Club.

“We’ve kind of outdone Chicago,” said Christina Tapp, the main organizer for the event and a CUDO co-sponsor.

PechaKucha Night Vol. 3 is different than most art events. As Fruck puts it, “it’s not the stuffy art scene.” Compared to art gallery openings and photography shows, PechaKucha is much more laid-back. It gives artists a chance to network with each other in a relaxed environment.

Daniel Schrieber, a regular attendee and PechaKucha presenter made connections with a local graphic design team to do the branding and logo for his fine chocolate company, Flatlander Chocolates. Now, he will be doing a a 20x20 presentation about fine chocolate in the next PechaKucha.

Project Runway contestant Ping Wu, who is originally from Urbana, will be doing a presentation about her journey from being a small-town designer to a nationally recognizable fashion designer in Chicago.

“It’ll be a little bit different, kind of like a back story. Something you wouldn’t hear or know if you were seeing her work, which is interesting about PechaKucha — you get the artist’s back story,” said Tapp.