The idea is simple: get a handful of Beijing's best and brightest artists and designers on stage selling their work to an attentive crowd. But complicate matters by giving each presenter a mere six minutes and 40 seconds with 20 PowerPoint slides to make the case. That's a scant 20 seconds per slide (hence the 20/20), in case you're keeping score.

"To condense all of your work into such a short time is a real challenge," says Johannes Reinsch, director of a German architecture firm in Beijing and Pecha Kucha presenter, "I've done many presentations before, but never anything this short."

What results is something akin to stand-up comedy, where some presenters accustomed to elaborate visual aids for presentations at business seminars often end up talking over time limits, not realizing the next slide has already come up. Such seems to be the case for designers like architects and engineers that work in technical fields. Musicians, video artists, photographers and other visual artists seem to have less trouble with the time constrictions.

"Twenty seconds is more then enough time for me," says graphic artist Wang Yuwei after his his six minutes and 40 seconds of fame. "My ideas and work are straight-forward enough that they can speak for themselves." Pecha Kucha is not unique to Beijing. The event goes back to 2003 when two architects based in Tokyo dreamed up the 20/20 format, and it wasn't long before Pecha Kucha (Japanese for chit-chat ) became a global franchise. Today there are active Pecha Kucha communities in Buenos Aires, London, Berlin, Rotterdam, New York, San Francisco and Lagos.

Pecha Kucha first touched down in Sanlitun mid-December last year without much prior warning. Event organizer Sebastian Linack had no idea how many people were going to show up and was pleasantly surprised when Kokomo, the Tongli bar where the first event was held, was standing room only.

The reason for the big turnout may be Pecha Kucha's uniqueness.

"Never before has there been an opportunity like this in Beijing to gather together to network," Linack says. "Before, in Beijing, everybody was presenting apart from one another." There are tentative plans to hold at least four Pecha Kucha parties every year.

Another reason is the nature of the work presented, ranging from the outright wacky (videos of one artist's attempts to turn a building in Germany into a musical instrument) to the professionally serious (a slide show on the chemical compositions of new structures being built around Beijing) to even the genuinely heartwarming (photos of recent humanitarian projects in Afghanistan).

Networking is also central to the event.

"This is a fantastic thing for regional artists normally working independently of one another to come out and actually see each other's work," says Matthew Joscelyn, an installation artist at work on projects for the 2008 Olympics.

Already confirmed for the next Pecha Kucha party on Sunday, April 7, are Xiao Yong, a graphic designer responsible for the design of the Olympic medals to be handed out to winning athletes during the Games, and Jimmy Liang, an architect whose firm specializes in something he calls "approach architecture."

Given that this second installment of the Pecha Kucha promises to build upon the success of the first, the event was moved to the Nike 706 Space, out in 798. This time, a lot more people will be getting seats no matter how late they arrive.