Charles Martineau

(Full dis­claimer: Garr Reynolds, the author of the book “The Naked Pre­sen­ter”, was my pro­fes­sor when I stud­ied at

Kan­sai Gaidai Uni­ver­sity in 2007. I was blown away by how good this teacher was at teach­ing, shar­ing his knowl­edge, but more impor­tantly to make us hun­gry for curios­ity. Thus, some may say that I am not objec­tive when I rec­om­mend this book but I can’t see how any­one would dis­like this book either.)

Who’s Garr Reynolds?

Garr Reynolds is one of today’s top experts to con­sult when it comes to mak­ing pre­sen­ta­tions either as a researcher, busi­ness per­son, etc. We all had to go through a crappy expe­ri­ence at lis­ten­ing some­one speak­ing in front of an audi­ence using Pow­er­Point where the speaker reads the slides which are full of text (which no one reads) and where we don’t feel engage what­so­ever. Garr was a for­mer Man­ager of World­wide User Group Rela­tions at Apple Com­puter in Sil­i­con Val­ley. With Apple, Garr worked with user groups (brand com­mu­ni­ties) in the U.S. and Japan and deliv­ered pre­sen­ta­tions, soft­ware demos, and keynote addresses to the firm’s most loyal cus­tomers. It is then that he found is love to present but also how to present well! He noticed that in the busi­ness world, the qual­ity of pre­sen­ta­tions was just sim­ply quite pathetic!

Garr’s love for pre­sen­ta­tion led him to cre­ate a web­site called Pre­sen­ta­tion Zen (PZ). At PZ, Garr teaches his insights and tips on how to deliver pre­sen­ta­tions with a touch of Zen and Japan­ese cul­ture. Garr saw in the study of Zen many lessons that we should apply to the world of pre­sen­ta­tions. His web­site became the most pop­u­lar web­site on pre­sen­ta­tion and decided to write a book called Pre­sen­ta­tion Zen. This book became a best seller and one of the top busi­ness books of Ama­zon in 2008. His first book was an all-around book on how to deliver good pre­sen­ta­tions and go beyond Pow­er­Point with a touch of Zen.

His sec­ond book, Pre­sen­ta­tion Zen Design, which was released in 2009 focused specif­i­cally on how to cre­ate bet­ter designed pre­sen­ta­tions. He shares his lessons on design­ing effec­tive pre­sen­ta­tions that con­tain text, graphs, color, images, and video.

His lat­est book which was just released is called The Naked Pre­sen­ter. That is the book I will briefly write about and seri­ously recommend.

The Naked Pre­sen­ter: Deliv­er­ing Pow­er­ful Pre­sen­ta­tions With or With­out Slides – A must for any­one who speaks in front of an audience

Garr’s lat­est book aims at teach­ing pre­sen­ters how to com­mu­ni­cate the essence of your mes­sage by strip­ping away all that is unnec­es­sary (i.e. point­less slides, text, etc.) and embrac­ing the ideas of sim­plic­ity, clar­ity, hon­esty, integrity and most impor­tantly PASSION through your “naked­ness” or “nat­u­ral­ness”. This book teaches the core of pre­sen­ta­tions – ten (plus one extra) deliv­ery prin­ci­ples that begin with the let­ter P. They are: Prepa­ra­tion, Punch, Pres­ence, Pro­jec­tion, Pas­sion, Prox­im­ity, Play, Pace, Par­tic­i­pa­tion, and Power.

Why Naked?

Taken from the con­cept of Japan­ese pub­lic bath called Onsen (温泉  in Japan­ese) where every­one who is in the bath is naked, Garr makes a link on how Japan­ese bath can make you more pre­pared to make bet­ter pre­sen­ta­tion of your core mes­sage. As in pub­lic bath, pre­sen­ters should be naked: remov­ing the unnec­es­sary and expose what is most impor­tant. The ten Ps teaches you how to be naked.

Quick insights on some of the ten Ps – prepa­ra­tion, punch, and Pas­sion.

Prepa­ra­tion: At school, I see stu­dents prepar­ing their pre­sen­ta­tions the night before the pre­sen­ta­tion day…what the hell? No won­der there is so many crappy pre­sen­ta­tions out there. It takes time to pre­pare a good pre­sen­ta­tion. Hence, the first P takes a big part of the book. It teaches how to find time to pre­pare you pre­sen­ta­tion, the neces­sity to under­stand your audi­ence prior your pre­sen­ta­tion and the power of story (sto­ries is what makes pre­sen­ta­tion sticks in people’s mind). Good prepa­ra­tion gives you the chance to remove the unnec­es­sary of your core message.

Punch: To make your core mes­sage stand out it needs to PUNCH in the state of people’s mind. For instance, does your core mes­sage chal­lenges con­ven­tional assump­tions? Is it in any­way per­sonal? You will find that when you core mes­sage as a PUNCH fea­ture, build­ing a story around your core mes­sage becomes eas­ier, hence it makes you more open to the audi­ence and eas­ier to grab people’s attention.

Pas­sion: One way to show your true naked­ness is by show­ing your emo­tions through pas­sion! When you are pas­sion­ate by your work, project, prod­uct, and etc there is no way that you shouldn’t demon­strate that pas­sion to your audi­ence. By doing so, you’re engag­ing your audi­ence in your pre­sen­ta­tion (as long as you make them feel why they should also be pas­sion­ate). Grow­ing as a kid, it was easy to go in front of the class and just be joy­ful and pas­sion­ate but for some sad rea­son, grown-up pre­sen­ta­tions are always too seri­ous. We demand seri­ous pre­sen­ta­tions — but why? This kills the vibe for cre­ativ­ity and engage­ment. The book teaches you how to express your pas­sion through professionalism.

Pre­sen­ta­tions is all about hav­ing conversations

Hav­ing Garr as a teacher, read­ing is blog and his two pre­vi­ous book reli­giously, and always pay­ing atten­tion to all the great pre­sen­ta­tions that you find on the web, is lat­est book made me real­ized some­thing that I never really noticed or taken seri­ously. When you present, you are sim­ply hav­ing a dis­cus­sion or con­ver­sa­tion. For some rea­son, my mind always clas­si­fied pre­sen­ta­tions and con­ver­sa­tions in two sep­a­rate groups. But this is not the case! Once you real­ize inside your mind that you are sim­ply hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with your audi­ence, it is much eas­ier to express your true self and be authen­tic because you remove the bar­ri­ers to for­mal­ity. As said by the author:

“Just like a good con­ver­sa­tion­al­ist, a pre­sen­ter with good pres­ence will con­nect with you on some level and demon­strate with sin­cer­ity that, at least for the moment, he or she does not wish to be any­where else than right there hav­ing a dia­logue with you.”

Fol­low the Pre­sen­ta­tion Zen movement

I highly sug­gest every­one to fol­low Garr’s blog Pre­sen­ta­tion Zen. This will make you a much bet­ter pre­sen­ter on a weekly basis. You will be hooked on the web­site and you will turn your­self to Garr’s three books. By doing so, we will live in a much bet­ter world where there will be bet­ter pre­sen­ta­tions because there is no such thing as bor­ing knowl­edge, only bor­ing presentations.