PKN_Dunedin_07 // Wednesday 25 August 2010 // doors open 7.00pm, starts 7.30pm // Lecture Theatre P152 (off Riego St), New Art Block at the Otago Polytechic

• Margo Barton // Design Educator and Milliner // Get a-head, get a hat

• Zina Vandervis // Graphic Designer// OUSA Designer

• Blair Kennedy // Artist and Educator // Toitu, a brief history of Queens Gardens

• Kerry Ann Lee // Artist and Educator // Shanghai 2010: underneath the electric city

• Qassim Saad // Academic Leader-Product Design // The Culture of food at home

• Aaron Hawkins // Broadcaster, writer, Mayoral candidate // Through The Past Darkly: A Musical History

• Jacque Gilbert // MFA student // Wee photobooks

• Julie Woods // International speaker and author // Turning your “no” into “why not”

• Richard O’Neill-Dean // Psychotherapist // Time in the Mountains

• Ron Esplin // Artist // Of course you can paint in watercolour

• Rachael Rakana // Artist

PechaKucha Night in Shanghai Vol. 14 was held earlier this month, and if this photo found on Flickr (by user triplefivechina) is anything to by, it was nicely attended. You can see streaming photos of previous PKNs in Shanghai by visiting the city’s official page on the PK site.

With PechaKucha Nights happening the world over — in 338 cities and counting — we here at PK HQ in Tokyo don’t often get to see who is organizing the events locally, and so it’s fun when it does happen. The photo above is by Robin Fall, and features the team behind PKN Beijing, led by Sebastian Linack. The next PKN in Beijing takes place in October, and appropriately enough, will have “photography” as a theme.

Looks like someone was pretty happy to get a copy of the official PechaKucha Night book, as the photo above shows — actually, we’re pretty sure that’s the organizer of PKN Xalapa. Do you have a copy of the book? If so, why not send a photo of it with an interesting background — we’d love to start a post series here on the blog. And if you don’t have a copy, what are you waiting for?

Only a very few cities have made it to that magic volume number — 20, of course — and Gothenburg is the most recent one to hit the milestone. The city has just had its Vol. 21 — attracting a crowd of 700+ no less — but here’s a look at the big “2-0″ event, with comments by organizer Jesper Larsson.

On June 6th (before the holidays) we arranged the 20th edition of PechaKucha in Göteborg! Since the number 20 is holy in this context, we also arranged an anniversary party and a previous presenter reunion besides the usual presentations. After all, it was the Swedish National Day and since people don’t know how to celebrate it here, we thought we would introduce a new tradition: 20 x 20.

Eccentric graffiti artist Grafitta both presented and later performed live dressed up like some beautiful creature out of Avatar.

Karin Granstrand & Annika Wahlström presented the Folkdräkt 2.0-projekt, trying to reinvent the Swedish national costume.

Indian PK Mahanandia presented his life story – the most heart-warming story ever told at PechaKucha Gothenburg. It was like Slumdog Millionaire but for real, and it ended with PK riding his bike all the way from India to Sweden in order to be with the love of his life. They are still married and living in Borås with their two children.

Legendary progressive theatre and music group Nationalteatern warned the audience of their upcoming come back.

Brittish Scott Blixen presented postpunk graphics.

The chief of Sweden’s only design museum, Röhsska, showed pictures of rotten fruit and spoke about the beauty of aging.

Since it was the Swedish National Day, designer Dan Henriksson offered a new suggestion on how to celebrate the modern multicultural Sweden. Here is what he had to say about it:

“As Swedes in general avoid waving or presenting our flag even on this day, fearing being seen as a nationalist or simply not caring, I wanted to provoke thoughts about how strong of a symbol a flag can be and what it actually means to belong to a nationality. The importance of this action is the context of our own national holiday, while creating all other countries flags but with the exact yellow and blue colours that Sweden flag has, and at the same time not presenting our own. I created hand-held fabric flags for the visitors to wave around, as well as strung up flags decorating the ceilings.”

The group Pervers Kroki (Perverted Croquis) presented the first issue of their fanzine and also put on a live show including arty videos, DJ Dienasty, live perverted croquis, and a copy-machine where you could xerox your genitalia.

DJ Naomi Paradise playing when the people are starting to arrive.

Our social media editor Frida Nelhans updating the world on what’s happening on the Gothenburg PechaKucha stage in realtime via Twitter.

Here’s a short video sneak peek at last week’s PechaKucha Night in Victoria Vol. 3, which had the theme of “Thought for Food.” Even better, free food and cocktails were available for all, as organizer Elisa Yon explains.

The evening had our best attendance yet. 200 people crammed into the Victoria Event Centre to listen to 13 presenter’s talk about burgers, food composting, a new downtown permanent food and produce market, food stylism, food photography, local food entrepreneurs and wood fired ovens made out of cob. We were also able to use the profits from our last two PechaKucha Nights to provide complimentary food and support a local food entrepreuneur, Heather Cunliffe from Cafe Bliss who specializes in raw and organic foods.