Recently a phenomenon has hit Minneapolis- 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide (that’s 6 minutes and 40 seconds total).
To be fair, Solutions Twin Cities has been doing this since its debut in May of 2007. The presentation format is exactly what it says. You are allowed 20 slides, each of which are shown for 20 seconds only- and you don’t control the slides, so they keep moving whether you’re on pace or not.
Last Friday night’s arrival of Pecha Kucha is the first time Minneapolis has taken part in this international trend. Largely led by the design community in Tokyo, Pecha Kucha provides a great excuse for the creative community to share ideas. Last Friday, people waited outside in a line down the block to hear and see plots for screenplays, University Avenue photographs, and the Parisian bike-share program. You can find Pecha Kuchas all over the globe, like in Denver, LA, Omaha, Oaxaca, Mauritius, Buenos Aires, and Melbourne- and that’s just this week.
And as if that weren’t enough, Ignite comes to Minneapolis April 22nd at Solera. Ignite appears to be a bit broader in definition (although shorter, allowing only 15 seconds per slide), and can include pretty much anything as far as I can tell. I think their tagline “Enlighten us, but make it quick” sums it up well. Their website shows sample Ignite videos “How to be a good news commenter” and “How to buy a car”. If that doesn’t get you curious, perhaps free beer will get you there.
In the past week, I’ve had the pleasure of hearing two great and inspirational speakers. First, I went to the Center for Spirituality & Healing sponsored event at the University of Minnesota featuring Van Jones. Van is known for his crusading to use the new green economy to raise this nation’s poor citizens. However, in the talk he gave last Thursday, he talked less about installing solar panels and more about integration- of green movements and community development efforts and of personal development and societal advancement. He’s an engaging speaker and I highly recommend you go hear him if you get a chance. On a local note, he stated that Minnesota is one of just a handful of states poised to really demonstrate that green jobs can help communities.
A day later I attended the Nobel Peace Prize Forum at St. Olaf College in 
Northfield, MN. While there were many interesting speakers and topics, the crowd favorite was clearly John Francis, also known as the Planetwalker. Inspired by seeing an oil spill in San Francisco, Mr. Francis gave up motorized transportation for 22 years and walked all over this country and many others, playing the banjo as he went. He also gave up speaking during 17 years of that time. Along the way he got a Phd and became an expert on oil spills. His message was very personal, but he stressed that if you are on the right path there are forces out there that will help you along.
Both of these gentlemen have books available if you want to learn more:
For those of you in the Minneapolis area, there is a Minnebar tonight at 7PM at Intermedia Arts. Minnebar is the Minneapolis version of Barcamp, which is an international organization that brings together technology start-ups for demos, support, and networking. It’s free and generally pretty interesting. For more information, check out their Google groups page.
I have also had several requests for a little more info on that $3,000 I received from Innocentive. The challenge I won was posted by Innocentive (normally challenges are posted by companies like Proctor & Gamble and Eli Lilly) for new ideas for their website. It was pretty straightforward, but I did spend a good amount of time organizing my thoughts and creating small mockups of web pages. Apparently they liked it!
Today I walked part of the Hyderabad 10K with my coworkers, mostly just to promote our company. It started with a group warmup and a live band, followed by the start of the race. There were serious runners vying for serious prize money, but most people saw it as something fun to do on a Sunday. Like many participants, we had no intention of completing the race. I think we maybe completed 2K and in that distance I saw participants buying and eating ice cream and stopping for chai. During and afterwards, the band played patriotic songs and the crowd danced and drank water and tried to get noticed by the camera for the big screen. As a white girl with a clearly Indian company, I stood out a little. I w
as interviewed by 2 local news stations (I don’t have a TV so I don’t know if I actually got air time). Hopefully it’s all good press for GreenMango. It was sure fun for those of us who turned out.
Other parts of the race were pretty much the same as what I’ve seen in the US. There is a lot of corporate sponsorship and corporate groups running together. This particular event was the first major public event in Hyderabad since the recent events in Mumbai, so there were moments of silence and words of support for everyone there. I was impressed that the event had a large turnout despite the Mumbai attacks.
Last week I attended the Microfinance India Summit in Delhi. It was nice to focus on microfinance for a few days, since my day-to-day work doesn’t really involve it, but more than anything it was great to catch up with the original leader of Team Awesome (the Microfinance Alliance), Mary Jo. She is working at the Grameen Foundation in D.C. and we met up at the conference. I attended their panel on social performance measurement, which was interesting. I also attended sessions on Technology and Value Chains in Livelihoods. Overall, I came away with the sense that 1) the profit-motive vs. social motive debate continues, 2) there is a need for significant regulatory reform in this realm in India, and 3) there is a lot of interesting work going on.
Outside of the conference, I didn’t get a chance for much touring. I booked a bed & breakfast online with no down-payment, so I showed up in Delhi ready for it to be awful or not reserved for me. It turns out Vandana’s B&B is just lovely. I stayed in one of the 3 guest rooms in her home in the park-filled Safdarjung Enclave. She even got worried and called one night when I hadn’t been home all day and it was rather late- very sweet. On the downside, everything you read about Delhi scams seems to be true. For instance, I never succeeded in getting to the Dilli Haat shopping area because the rikshaw drivers all wanted to take me to some place they know of, which is actually an overpriced tourist trap where they get a commission for bringing you. But that’s really the only lame thing I endured.
Recently a phenomenon has hit Minneapolis- 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide (that’s 6 minutes and 40 seconds total).
