The Naked Presenter about you being about the audience

It is a good bet that if you talk to any student who has taken any of my Coker College communication classes from introductory speech to crisis communication you will find them ready to expand on one important principle -- knowing your audience is the most important principle of communication.

When you read Garr Reynolds book, THE NAKED PRESENTER,(New Riders - 2011) you will get a really good answer to the often asked question, Why? Why do I need to the know the audience is a question I get a lot. "Look, my questioner will say, I have an important message to give and I am not going to sacrifice my message just because the audience might not have a long enough attention span. Or just because the audience might not be in the frame of mind to listen to what I have to say. Or, just because the audience is not really smart enough to understand what I have to say. It is my message and it is important." And, I just had a semblance of that conversation at a coffee shop yesterday as someone was asking me about the Reynold's book.

The whole reason people make presentations is to get their message into the minds of others so that things can happen. A presentation, even an informative speech, is about making change happen. To make this change happen your message needs to get noticed and then needs to get processed. If you ignore the wide variety of things that will get your audience to ignore YOUR message you will find that no matter how much material is covered YOU have not been successful. Reynolds, using is broad background in presentations, has created a relatively short, dynamic, powerful tool of insight that presenters can use to improve their chances of making change happen.

At the end of the book, Reynolds points out the major premise, "the theme of this book is that naturalness in delivery -- bringing more of your own unique personality to your presentations -- will amplify your messages in a what that will them noticed, understood and remembered." (p 193) Notice those process words in this theme -- Noticed, Understood, Remembered. Those three processes are all up to the audience. It is the speaker who crafts the presentation to make those happen.

Garr Reynolds has been living in Japan for much of his life and this book comes from that background of personal experience. And, that background is what gives strength to what is a book on presentations. His take very much involves his personal experience, which gives us a new lens through which to view presentations. To reinforce that last thought I want to borrow a quote he uses from the modern dance guru -- Martha Graham (p 160): "There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique."


THE NAKED PRESENTER is a unique look at presenting and public speaking that is accessible, enjoyable and knowledgeable and it helped this reader expand presentation boundaries.