SF-PechaKucha #38 Inspiring
Last night was my third time presenting at the San Francisco PechaKucha Night, and perhaps the most inspirational of the four(?) events I have attended, partly because of the response I got to my presentation and the interesting conversations it generated later, but mostly because of a couple of the other presentations.
One I can do justice to here, without linking to the yet-to-be-posted presentation. The second really deserves to wait until I can point you to the presentation itself.
Christopher Simmons’ (of MINE) talk was an elegant exercise in minimalism that worked exceptionally well. In all of the 20 slides allotted to PechaKucha talks, his contained photos of only two objects. One $5 corkscrew and one $50 corkscrew.
That’s it—20 different close-ups and comparisons of these two extremes of form and function. In this brief 6:20 talk, Christopher told us everything we needed to know about why the $50 Rösle is worth ten times as much as the junky approximation of a useful, desirable tool. He waxed eloquently about the beauty/ugliness of the finish, rivets, and form, how the Rösle sits in place almost no matter which side you lay it down on, and even the almost insignificant stud on the foilcutter whose only function is to stop the cutter from hiding too deeply in the tool.
His characterization of the tool was so compelling and complete that I didn’t feel the need to handle the actual object to believe in his passion for it, and when I did get to scrutinize the corkscrew, it was not to decide if I agreed with him, but to marvel at what I already agreed with.
This talk has inspired me to take a brief break from my campaign for better symbols, and attempt to emulate his sublime skill. Now, to find an object so deserving…
