Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) -- You have just under 7 minutes to talk about reiki massage for dogs, starting now.

That's one of hundreds of topics that have been presented at Pecha Kucha, an open forum for ideas on design, architecture and a lot else that has swept the world in just four years. Pronounced ``peh-chak-cha,'' the mix of kindergarten show-and-tell, open-mike night and happy hour is in 80 cities, a must-attend for anyone wanting to be part of the local creative scene.

The rules are simple: show 20 slides and talk about each for 20 seconds. Then sit down.

Pecha Kucha nights from Amsterdam to Wellington allow architects, artists, photographers, designers and others with an imaginative brainchild to show their stuff.

And they do. In Berlin, a student demonstrated his Firefox extension that restyles websites to look 1990s-retro; a violist in Austin, Texas, narrated a day in her life. A designer in Beijing gave a peek at the 2008 Olympic medals; Shanghai attendees learned about the canine reiki.

Some sessions attract big names. London last year hosted architect Rem Koolhaas and designer Tom Dixon. Pecha Kucha in New York tonight lists speakers including artist Jose Parla.

The lightning pace and a half-time for hobnobbing and drinks keep things lively over the 10-15 slide shows. Besides matching the speed at which people today absorb information and entertainment, Pecha Kucha is a boon for creative professionals who work solo, said Giel Groothuis, architect and co-organizer of the Shanghai evenings. It prompts them to ``exchange ideas, start a discussion and see different things.''

`Sound of Chatter'

Pecha Kucha, Japanese for ``the sound of chatter,'' was started by Tokyo-based architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham in 2003 to draw patrons to a club they owned.

As word of the gatherings spread overseas, Klein and Dytham made franchise-style gentlemen's agreements: Local organizers can use Pecha Kucha's trademark and materials as long as they honor its format and purpose.

After reading about it on a Dutch website last year, Groothuis persuaded friend and architect Viktor Oldiges to help him test Pecha Kucha in Shanghai. Within a few weeks they had a lineup, mostly friends and colleagues, and unrolled it before 200 people at a design center in the Moganshan art district.

These days, Groothuis and Oldiges cull proposals and slides from presenter-hopefuls, eliminating about 10 percent of them, but ``basically anything is OK,'' Groothuis said.

The seventh and most recent Shanghai meeting at the end of August had about 600 local Chinese and expatriates, mostly in their 20s and 30s, at Shanghai Sculpture Space's main hall, which resembles an airplane hangar.

Concrete Cavern

The more serious jockeyed for front seats and snapped photos with their cell phones. Toward the back of the concrete cavern minglers kept up a rival sound of chatter.

The evening zipped through relief of creative blockage, city sounds, rugby 101, an architect's biking adventures in Shanghai suburbia, North Korea's pro sports and an ode to disco. The big crowd pleaser was a set of lip-smacking pictures of noodles, turtle-in-a-hotpot and other cheap Chinese eats taken by a British man sporting a stubby ponytail.

Australian architect James Brearley characterized Chinese cities as ``hopeless'' from an urban-planning standpoint and then focused on his favorite part of Pecha Kucha, socializing.

David Dieter, whose artwork has been exhibited in Beijing, came with his wife and an art-loving friend new to Shanghai. On a previous Pecha Kucha night, Dieter had shown his paintings, heard feedback and met other graphic designers.

``This is a good networking opportunity and it's a cool scene,'' said Dieter, who moved from San Francisco early this year. ``It's a concentration of so many creatives. This is a nice mix of everybody.''

Variety Show

Others want less of a variety show. Su Yunsheng, a vice- director at Tongji University's Urban Planning Design Institute in Shanghai, said he was engrossed at one of the first, architecture- and-design-dominated nights, but the latest was ``more like sharing living experiences of foreigners.'' Only a third of the slide shows, including Su's and a visiting London architect's, were truly about design.

Most presenters in Shanghai are expatriates, in part because the lingua franca, English, scares off ``some of the Chinese who are not so fluent,'' Su said. Still, the architect believes Pecha Kucha should stay with English.

``If you speak in Chinese and joke about politics,'' you might ``be stopped,'' said Su, co-founder of architecture magazine Urban China. Using a foreign language, some Chinese feel freer to broach ``topics you'd never touch.''

Pecha Kucha evenings are scheduled for tonight in New York at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery, 131 E. 10th St., and in Tokyo on Oct. 15 at Superdeluxe, B1F 3.1.25 Nishi Azabu, Minato-ku. The next event in Shanghai is on Nov. 16 at 1933, 10 Shajing Lu, Hongkou District. For details on these and other cities, go to http://www.pecha-kucha.org.

(Barbara Koh writes on culture for Bloomberg news. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer on this story: Barbara Koh in Shanghai at barbkoh@gmail.com.

Last Updated: October 9, 2007 12:08 EDT