When Shaun Maslyk gets up on stage at Metro Cinema to do a not-even seven-minute talk on Thursday, he will be using some words that will certainly make some audience members uncomfortable.
“Most people think it’s a gross, disgusting word. It evokes tons of emotions. We avoid it and do the ostrich effect, which is to shove your head in the sand and hope it goes away. It doesn’t. It leads to frustration,” he said.
The “F” word is finance.
The certified financial planner is one of 10 presenters who will be in the spotlight for Edmonton’s Pecha Kucha Night. It’s the 32nd such event that has taken place in the capital city and it always offers something for everybody. Thursday’s event has other speakers who will talk about everything from the FIFA World Cup 2026 to why museums are better with friends, to parking. The name of the opening presentation by Kristopher Banner is “How I Became a Vampire Lord.”
Originally from Morinville, Maslyk says that he is someone who has always been fascinated with the relationship between people’s finances and their happiness levels in life. It’s a fascination that has taken him around the world too.
“After travelling to about 30 different countries in the world, it’s really shown me how other people in the world live. Too often we use money as the end goalpost to evaluate our levels of fulfilment and happiness where it clearly can be seen around the world people with a lot less money have a lot higher happiness levels than us.”
Money, he continued, doesn’t need to be the be-all and end-all. More people should start by thinking about what makes them happy in life and focusing on that alone. In turn, money should be the tool that helps to take them there. When we start with money as the thing that’s going to make us happy, it sometimes leads us to stress, not happiness, he added.
His talk will be more of a philosophical one than a primer into basic banking and accounting. He hopes to get people to fall in love with their finances in order to help them achieve their goals and be happier.
Being a certified financial planner has given him a wealth of technical skills in the world of finance that often seems like a land of confusion to the layperson. Those are only his technical skills though, whereas his real training, he says, came from wanderlust. He travelled around the entire world for a year, “spending less than the average Canadian earns here and realizing that I was pretty damn happy for a whole year.”
Every two months, Maslyk also hosts his own The Most Hated F-Word meetup featuring guest speakers. The next one is scheduled for 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 7, at the Alldritt Building, 500 West Tower, Coronation Plaza, 14310 111 Ave. in Edmonton. Details on those events can be found on his Facebook page for “The Most Hated F-Word”.
The Pecha Kucha agenda
Pecha Kucha is a Japanese word that basically means “chitchat”. Anika Gee, the volunteer co-chair with the local organizing committee at Edmonton’s NextGen, said the concise presentation format began with an architectural firm in Japan because “architects take a really long time to get their ideas out there.”To help move their presentations along, the firm adopted a format of giving each presenter the chance to show 20 slides at 20 seconds each, for a total presentation time of six minutes and 40 seconds.
“It came from folks who wanted to present things in a creative setting and how do we get that more concise. It grew to be something that now has massive international recognition. It’s all over the place.”
Edmonton Pecha Kucha Nights always have 10 presenters who each have their allotted time to present on any topic that they are passionate, knowledgeable or interested about. Gee has heard fascinating talks on city planning, personal storytelling, and even pineapples and donairs.
“It has been the whole gamut. The really great part is that you don’t have to be a CEO to speak. You don’t have to be a well-known successful person that would normally be able to get such a platform. We really are the space for anyone and everyone who has something that they think is share-worthy to come and, through their format, present whatever it is that they’re pumped about.”
Tomorrow’s event starts at 7 p.m. at Metro Cinema, 8712 109 St. in Edmonton. Tickets are $20 each or two for $30. Visit www.edmontonnextgen.ca/pkn to learn more.
