Petcha Kutcha (pronounced pet-chach-ka) is the Japanese word for “chatter”. It is a presentation format in which content can be easily, efficiently and informally shown, usually at a public event called for that purpose. In this format, the presenter shows 20 images for 20 seconds apiece; exactly for 6 minutes and 40 seconds. It forces one to be concise, creative and compelling. How do we do it?
Originally devised by Architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham who sought to give young designers a venue to meet, network, show their work and to attract people to their experimental event space. They devised a format that kept presentations very concise to stimulate and sustain audience attention and increase the number of presenters within the course of one night. A typical Pecha Kucha Night hosts eight to 14 presenters. This video shows how it works!
Now, there are Pecha Kucha nights in 80 cities in the world. In Munich, Brussels, Melbourne, San Francisco, Glasgow, Eindhoven, Jakarta and Manila.
Why not Pecha Kutcha in development? Why not Petcha Kucha in your next meeting? Can you use it in presenting your next project’s DMF to the beneficiaries? We like to hear your stories!
]]>It is a composite audio/video of song whereby additional tracks were laid in by different singers and musicians from different places around the world. The finished product is tremendous! The song itself is that classic standard “Stand By Me” released in 1955 by The Staple Singers and released again in 1961 by the Drifters. This composite version is a real toe tapper.
Interestingly, “stand by me” could be a song by a project manager to solicit more commitment, ownership and teamwork. I will try and show it at the end of every project development workshop that I will conduct. Lots of hhhuuggssss
Ed Canela
Click to watch….
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Other readings on PM&E, as well as some case studies and field experiences are available in these links:
http://intercooperation.org.in/images/icindia/Part.pdf
http://www.coady.stfx.ca/resources/abcd/SEWA%20PME%20Manual.pdf
And for those who are interested to undergo formal training and who don’t mind travelling to the Philippines, a 3-week course is being offered on PM&E. See link.
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Another Training of Facilitators in Results-focused Project Design and Management has been conducted at the Pilgrimage Village Hotel in Hue, Vietnam. The event ran from 12-20 May and was attended by a good mix of international participants from different backgrounds. The group, composed of individuals from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Laos, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Singapore, [...]]]>
Another Training of Facilitators in Results-focused Project Design and Management has been conducted at the Pilgrimage Village Hotel in Hue, Vietnam. The event ran from 12-20 May and was attended by a good mix of international participants from different backgrounds. The group, composed of individuals from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Laos, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Singapore, and a host of project managers from the Vietnam government, has finally completed the nine-day training workshop which included sessions on the project design tools and facilitation inputs.
]]>By David Stevensi
Your face may not be your fortune, but your facial expression is as much a part of communication with others as is speaking. We all know and easily recognize the common expressions like fear, interest, sadness, shame, disgust, surprise, happiness, and anger. In fact, these [...]]]>
By David Stevensi
Your face may not be your fortune, but your facial expression is as much a part of communication with others as is speaking. We all know and easily recognize the common expressions like fear, interest, sadness, shame, disgust, surprise, happiness, and anger. In fact, these facial expressions are universal. As evidenced in Evolutionary Psychology by David Buss, if you show photos or even drawings of people exhibiting these emotions to anyone in the world, no matter how remote, they will attribute the correct interpretation to every look without fail. Some cultures may interpret the intensity of the emotion differently. Asian people, in general, rate a less intense facial expression than would an American. In these cultures, displaying emotion too strongly is considered impolite and so there is a tendency to play down in the mind what may actually be present. One doesn’t see what one doesn’t want to see, so to speak, but facial expressions can be far more subtle than this.
For instance, almost everyone has met someone who is seemingly friendly and happy, but afterwards says, “I don’t think he liked me” or “He didn’t seem so happy underneath.” That is because, although many expressions are voluntary, many more are beyond our control. They flit across a face, sometimes lasting only a microsecond, and even though we may not consciously perceive them in others, our sub-conscious is nevertheless taking in the information displayed. Reading facial expressions is something that goes back to the dawn of man. Those who were good at it tended to be able to tell friend from foe a little better and thus lived a little longer. Those who did not read facial expressions as well were disadvantaged and tended to have shorter lives.
The skill is still variable, however people have an innate ability that enables them to read the main emotion signifiers; it is the micro-expression that slips by many of us. If we accept that such facial expressions are universal, there must be a set of rules governing their manifestation.So thought anthropologist Paul Ekman in the late 1960s. He had shown that all cultures read facial expressions in much the same way and wanted to know what the mechanisms were that caused the expressions. Ekman, a professor at the University of California in San Francisco, put together a substantial videotape library of people’s face expressions and studied them, sometimes in slow motion, until he could pick up a flicker of emotion that might last no more than a small fraction of a second. He and a collaborator then decided that they needed to list all possible variations of expressions. To do this they had to study the underlying muscles and look at what controlled them in the brain. This was no easy task.
The muscles in the face can adjust themselves into 10,000 different configurations. An eyebrow lifted just a fraction, the eyes opened more than usual, or the lips turned down a smidgen, can produce an expression entirely different from that where the muscles pull the individual components into only a marginally different configuration. By working through every combination, he isolated 3,000 expressions that carried meaning. These were identified as the facial indicators for the entire gamut of human emotions. Ekman compiled the mechanics of all these combinations and the rules for reading and interpreting them into what he called, the Facial Action Coding System or FACS. So precise are the mechanics and rules that digital animation movie studios such as Pixar and Dreamworks used them to help properly animate the faces in Toy Soldier and Shrek.
It takes some study to be proficient at recognizing so many combinations of facial expression and their meaning. It takes even longer to be able to create those expressions at will on your own face. In an interview with the New Yorker magazine Ekman demonstrated his skills. He told how he was watching Bill Clinton on TV during the 1992 Democratic primaries and said, “I was watching his facial expressions and said to my wife, ‘This is Peck’s Bad Boy.’ This is a guy who wants to be caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and have us love him for it anyway. There was this expression that’s one of his favorites. It’s that hand-in-the-cookie-jar, love-me-Mommy-because-I’m-a-rascal look.” Ekman then began to assemble the look on his own face. He started with a classic smile, but tugged down the corners of the lips. He raised the chin, slightly pressed his lips together, and rolled his eyes. It was amazing. It was as if Bill Clinton had suddenly appeared in the room.
The recognition of facial expressions, particularly micro-expressions that come and go so swiftly is a skill much sought after in law-enforcement organizations. Ekman and ex-ATF agent J.J. Newbury put together a program to train officers of police forces around the world in interviewing techniques and lie detection. They also assist the CIA, FBI and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in counter-terrorism training.
A training tool they use is a tape of an interview with the famous “third man” in a soviet spy scandal in Britain during the Cold War. On the tape, Kim Philby, a high-ranking figure in British Intelligence appears to convincingly deny any wrongdoing; however, when played in slow motion, it is a different story. When asked if he has committed treason, a smirk of pure smugness, too brief to see normally, flits across his face. Ekman calls it “duping delight,” the thrill of fooling other people.
Police Sergeant Bob Harms is another expert face reader. He has always been able to read peoples’ facial expressions and body language, and one rainy night in West Hollywood, it saved his and his partner’s lives. They spotted a man all bundled up in a large coat and called him over to the squad car to check him out. They asked him what he was doing and he told them he was just out for a walk but had “something to show them.” While he was reaching beneath his coat, Harms shot him. Harms’ partner couldn’t believe it, but when they checked the body, they found a makeshift flamethrower with which the man was going to incinerate them. The follow-up investigation also discovered that the man was unstable and had just attempted suicide.
These are the geniuses of facial expression recognition, but everyone does it to some degree. Paul Ekman says it is not that hard to do it better. Close observation and being aware of what you are looking for can quickly improve your ability to judge what the other person is really thinking. Always remember: Your thoughts are written on your face for all to read.
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How can donors and partner countries assess the intended and unintended consequences of donor interventions? The Poverty-Network of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) proposes ex-ante Poverty Impact Assessment (PIA), which can assist in modifying the design of interventions to improve pro-poor impacts and identifying key areas for monitoring and evaluation (M&E). It can be applied to most modalities of donor support.
PIA is a process which helps policy-makers to understand the intended and unintended consequences of their interventions. This approach considers that good design of an intervention requires governments and their partners to understand the effect of their policies on diverse social groups, actors and institutions, including those not targeted by the policy.
The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness stresses the importance of results-oriented frameworks, harmonisation and alignment to improve aid effectiveness and to assure better pro-poor outcomes. Yet, prior analysis of the impacts of policy and investment decisions on poverty reduction is a complex task. It is often built on contentious assumptions and is dependent on data availability. Ex ante PIA helps donors and their partners understand and maximise the poverty reducing impacts of their interventions.
It responds both to the need for accountability to partners’ constituencies and to the importance of transparent evidence-based decision-making. It can identify interventions with high impact on poverty reduction and pro-poor growth as well as mitigating measures to protect the poor. A broad application of ex ante PIA could also provide a basis for a harmonised reporting system on poverty impacts.
Poverty Impact Assessment helps decision makers determine strategic choices for public actions so as to have the greatest impact on reducing poverty and achieving pro-poor growth. PIA provides a better understanding about potential winners and losers of an intervention and thus strengthens a results-oriented approach. PIA helps to understand stakeholders and institutions that influence and are influenced by an intervention and
to understand the importance and inter-relationship of specific transmission channels through which changes are transmitted to the stakeholders assess the likely positive and negative outcomes for stakeholders taking into account multi-dimensionality of poverty assess the reliability of data/information and knowledge gaps.
Using PIA, policy-makers can estimate the likely quantitative and qualitative outcomes of the policy for poor groups, identify potential risks and assess the reliability of available data. Through involving people with different interests and approaches, ex-ante Impact Assessment helps to design interventions to be better targeted to achieve their goals and avoid unintended harmful consequences. Thus it also contributes to strengthening the transparency and accountability of democratically elected governments, and encourages consistency of policy-making across policy areas.
PIA is not just another new approach to assess the distributional impacts of interventions. It deliberately draws on existing approaches and their terminology, in particular on the Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (PSIA). While PSIA is more suitable for structural policy reforms and involves rigorous in depth analysis, including specific data collection for thorough social, political and economic analysis and comprising a whole range of quantitative and qualitative tools including micro and macroeconomic modeling. PIA is a ‘lighter’ approach, drawing predominantly on existing data and analyses. It provides an estimation of effects and a quick overview and focuses more on subsector or program levels. But it can also help at the initial phase of sector or policy reforms to identify requirements for a full-fledged PSIA. PIA is thus less resource demanding. While a complete PSIA requires more than 100 000 Euro, the estimated cost of PIA is less than 20 000 Euro.
See the PIA Concept Note: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/13/9/38878575.pdf
For more information on Poverty Impact Assessment and POVNET’s work:
http://www.oecd.org/dac/poverty
UNDP: Poverty in Focus 14: P(S)IA: http://www.ipc-undp.org/pub/IPCPovertyInFocus14.pdf
Originally published in http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/AGEG-eco/ Photo from www.ethicalleadership.org/programs/the-confluence
]]>This phenomenon has its roots from the organization development community and is starting to hit prime time in [...]]]>
Can you imagine a workshop with no structure, pre-set agenda, no keynote speakers, no tables and talks that require only 20 slides (or less) delivered in 20 seconds (or less)? Well, Prepare to be surprised. Welcome to unconferencing!
This phenomenon has its roots from the organization development community and is starting to hit prime time in SME and corporate conferences, workshops, retreats, and gatherings. The unprecedented call (and now shouts) for more interactivity in large scale conference facilitation is the fuel to the fire. The usually expensive events is rapidly replacing the aging workshops (which actually ends in more work and less shops). Seriously, what is UNCONFERENCE?
An unconference is a facilitated, very much participant-driven conference centered around a theme or purpose. The term has been applied literally to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference, such as high fees and sponsored presentations. It moved from the geek sessions into large gatherings of experts and facilitators like you. Recently, many high tech entrepreneurs who by now are so tired of having lots of meetings, conferences and best of all time wasting presentations and numerous training programs. The more successful they are, the more they get invited…either as participants or worst, as speakers.
Unconference is driven by the fundamental law that the sum of the expertise of the people in the audience is greater than the sum of expertise of the people on stage. It can even be worst that this. As one observer noted: “If you swapped the people on stage with an equal number chosen at random from the audience, the new panelists would effectively be smarter, because they didn’t have the time to get nervous, to prepare PowerPoint slides, to make lists of things they must remember to say, or have overly grandiose ideas about how much recognition they are getting. In other words, putting someone on stage and telling them they’re boss probably makes them dumber. In any case it surely makes them more boring.”
Unconferences can produce creative and innovative ideas that deliver measurable results through an increase in engagement. When people build ideas together they get excited about them and put them into action.
Unconferences are implemented using a variety of facilitation methods. Some are already familiar to most of you. The tool box contains: Appreciative Inquiry, Barcamp, Birds of a Feather, The Fishbowl, FooCamp, Knowledge Cafe, Lightning Talks, Open Space Technology, World Cafe and Pecha Kucha (read that again, please!) from Japan.
You’ve probably heard or knew of Open Space—a unconference method. In Open Space, participants design the agenda, choose how they will spend their time, and generate a report that captures the lessons gathered by the group. What appears to be an unstructured approach is, in fact, very orderly and productive because it is based on principles of self-organization. What that means is that with a few simple rules, a group will do much of the organizing of a conference on its own, without heavy direction from planners, senior executives or speakers.
My favourite unconference method for trainers and facilitators is Pecha Kutcha that allows presenters only 20 slides presented in 20 secs or less (20 x 20 rule)! Checkout also sober tips for Petcha Kutcha presenters.
]]>The first Training of Facilitators in Results-focused Project Design and Management for 2009 was held in Ubud, Bali from 3-11 March 2009. It was attended by 22 participants from in and out of the southeast asian region who were all enthusiastic in learning and practicing the tools and skills in results-focused participatory project planning and management.
As [...]]]>
The first Training of Facilitators in Results-focused Project Design and Management for 2009 was held in Ubud, Bali from 3-11 March 2009. It was attended by 22 participants from in and out of the southeast asian region who were all enthusiastic in learning and practicing the tools and skills in results-focused participatory project planning and management.
As in previous TOF’s conducted by ADB, a big challenge faced by the participants is with absorbing and familiarizing themselves with the project design and management tools, as well as with the intermittent inputs on facilitation skills. These tools are introduced and delivered in an intensive 12-hour workday session for four straight days. However, what comes next is an even bigger challenge of applying the facilitation skills they learned through practice sessions using the participatory project design tools.
But if one is in a phenomenal and enchanting place like Ubud, with all that scenery and culture, who cares about working hard from time to time? All 22 participants surely did not mind.
The following clip was taken during the recent Training of Facilitators in Ubud.
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