If you’ve sat through many presentations, you’ll know there are two common problems with them: over-long ones, and others where the speaker pauses and plays about with his Powerpoint slides before explaining each one in excruciating detail.

Both those problems go out the window in a format being celebrated across the planet this week. Ignite is a presentation style designed to make it easy to share ideas and passions through three simple rules: presentations are fixed at five minutes, they all have exactly 20 slides, and each of these slides are automatically displayed for 15 seconds.

The idea is that the format forces speakers to boil down their ideas into a clear and focused structure, using illustrative slides which convey concise messages: with just 15 seconds to display and explain each point, there’s no room for waffling. The speaker also needs to have a pretty strong idea about what they are talking about in order to keep to the rhythm and avoid getting thrown by the slides advancing.

The concept was developed and first tried out in Seattle in 2006 (having been adapted from a Japanese idea called Pecha Kucha) but is now used for events worldwide. While Ignite events can take place anywhere and at anytime, being locally organized, this week (March 1 through March 5) has been classified as Global Ignite Week, with at least 50 events taking place as far afield as Jakarta, Brisbane and Nairobi.

Event organizers are encouraged to film the talks and upload them to both online video sites such as YouTube and the Ignite website. The general principle is that all events should be free to attend and are being run on a voluntary basis, with the speakers being unpaid and motivated by their desire to share knowledge. (As the movement’s slogan has it: “Enlighten us, but make it quick.”

So what do people talk about at Ignite? Anything and everything, as long as it fascinates and excites the speakers, and hopefully the audience. But here’s a sample of some previous talks:

The secret underground world of Lego

I Speak Klingon: Love 101 for Uber-Geeks

Should you quit your tech job and join a rock band?