Pecha Kucha 2
Sept. 11 (7 p.m.) Trans Alta Arts Barns (10330 84th Ave.) $5.

Mechanical engineer Christian Nelson doesn’t appreciate the witless comments  by visiting big-city journalists who love to label his beloved home by the river as  “Deadmonton.”

And University of  Alberta computing designer Matt Bouchard is tired of  complicated video game controllers that leave frustrated older players wondering whether they should make the next move with both thumbs or one select finger.

Both daring and good humoured young men with a better idea are part of a group of  10 presenters who will be allotted exactly six minutes and 40 seconds each at Edmonton’s second Pecha Kucha event to be held Sept. 11.

Pecha Kucha — Japanese for sound of chit chat — was started in Tokyo in 2003 as a forum for young thinkers and designers to share thoughts on their wide-ranging projects. Since then it has spread to 133 countries.

In Edmonton, the events are organized by city council’s Next Gen committee that is aimed at giving the upcoming generation of decision makers a voice in the development of the community.

In diverse presentations, speakers are allowed to present 20 slides for 20 seconds each to deliver a clear and quick message. In order to keep the evening from bogging down, no public debate or questions are accepted from the audience, though people are free to pull presenters aside after they’ve finished for private discussions.

“It’s not just architecture or interior design,” Next Gen organizer Mike Strong says. “It’s art, it’s how we think about designing.”

Nelson’s inspiration occurred in last month when he read a local media story suggesting that it is time to retire the word Deadmonton because it just doesn’t apply to booming Edmonton. But Nelson, whose engineering background has trained him to put theory into practice, doesn’t believe that can be done.
It’s better, he believes, to co-opt the slogan for the forces of good.

“I thought that as with any pejorative nickname, you can’t really retire it, what you have to do is make it work for you,” he says.

The first thing he’d do would be to start a weeklong Deadmonton festival drawing together the numerous Halloween events that are currently already happening at bars, the convention centre, malls and at Metro Cinema, which already uses the moniker for a small film festival.

“Since Edmonton is Festival City, why don’t we have a Deadmonton Festival,” he says. “There are already so many things going on that all I’m saying is why don’t we put out flyers and say it’s Deadmonton.”

Bouchard’s idea for a presentation arose from conversations about why more people don’t play video games.

“It’s usually because video game controllers had 100 buttons,” the 30-year-old says.

Early game controllers had maybe two buttons, but as games became more complicated for diehard players so did the controllers.

The casual gamer really hasn’t had the same chance to evolve,” he says. “And most discussions thus far haven’t really talked about how the player interacts with the controller.”

He has to admit, however, his ideas are a bit late. “I was just finishing an academic paper when the Wii came out and I was so mad,” he says. “One of my big ideas was to separate the two hands. It is foolish to force ourselves to hold one unit right in the middle. I thought it would be better to put a controller in each hand, which is just what the bastards at Nintendo have done.”

jholubitsky@see.greatwest.ca