I am giving a presentation in a couple of days to a group of Toastmasters.

For many of them, English is their second language. No big deal. At one point I had spent more than half of my adult life communicating in my second language including speaking/lecturing/teaching. There was a time when I was teaching Japanese words and their meaning to Japanese.

The lecture I am giving this Sunday has been announced in several places online. I can ‘see’ who has signed up to attend. I can ‘count heads.’ This encourages and motivates me when I see people are signing up.

I can also go back over past events that the group has offered to attendees who will be coming out this Sunday.

As it turns out, this particular group has been studying marketing via a free course offered online at Coursera.

I went there today. Signed up. And reviewed the curriculum.

Related: How to Know Your Audience

My goal is to have a big picture context and to know my audience.

I now know the audience, some by face, and some by their profiles that they offer up when they sign up to attend. And I know what the regular attendees have been studying for the past few weeks and will be studying in the coming weeks. That is, I know my place in the big picture.

This is tremendously useful to me.

As Ariel of Little Mermaid fame would say, “I want to be where the people are … ”

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