All the omens were good for Dublin’s inaugural Pecha Kucha night. €5 on the door – reasonable. Nine speakers, 20 slides each, 20 seconds per slide – sensible. The Sugar Club – fashionable.

The attendance was a capacity crowd, but on stage, the hit rate was slightly less impressive.

The international phenomenon that is Pecha Kucha (pronounced peCHAkCHA, meaning ‘chatter’ in Japanese) is designed to stimulate creative debate by bringing together a few speakers to offer their interpretation of a single theme through the 20-slide medium. The theme for last night’s edition, of which there will be five more in the next 12 months, was ‘Small ideas, Big Impact’. Plenty of scope there, easy to interpret. You might think.

Of the nine speakers in the Sugar Club, just one fulfilled the brief: the sharp, intelligent, witty and visually clear presentation of Conor + David (Conor’s no relation, by the way). They spoke about the simple concept of being 100% sure, and how one’s approach to it affects projects as big as the moon landing. It was clever, challenging and fun, no doubt as much for them, putting it together, as it was for us watching it delivered.

Notable mentions for doing something interesting, but way off brief, go to TAKA for their presentation on doors, and Will St Leger who gave a synopsis of his influences as an artivist (arty activist). Both were interesting but wholly unrelated to the theme.

Kudos for giggles go to journalist Cian Hallinan for his Ulysses v PS I Love You stand-up routine, and Giselle Scanlon, who got a few laughs as well for her rambling but snappily-delivered sermon on the wit of human miscommunication.

A big ‘aboooo’, however, to Thinkhouse PR, who seemed to give a six minute and 40 second pitch on why no-one should hire them. If your sole function as an entity is to communicate effectively and creatively according to a client’s brief, one would think that you could come up with some sort of clever interpretation of a simple theme that provided plenty of scope for creativity. Their immature and self-indulgent display – ‘Stuff we Like’ – failed massively. Slides were entitled ‘Tits’, ‘Jesus’, ‘Food’, ‘Holidays’, ‘New Shit’ and, an assortment of other random words. Thinkhouse, clearly trading off a rep as industry luvvies, came across like a company where professionalism is a value best kept at bay with big pink blowtorches and snarky howls from the canteen.

Not that I’m a rules nazi, but next time around, I’d like to see people offer differ interpretations on the theme, doing something thoughtful and creative, rather than merely putting themselves up there for self-promotion or self-indulgence, lest it becomes a platform for the same. The Pecha Kucha concept is good, and when the presenters were good, they were very, very good. But when they were bad, they were horrid.