![]() Very quickly, you get information-overloaded with new material and begin to wonder how you’re going to remember it all. You rush from session to session, trying to pack as much as possible in, and you fret about not having enough time to network. Making sense of a conference that you attend is hard work. Yet so specialized has the profession of keynote speaking become that few speakers actually are hired to introduce a conference with the specific task of highlighting what the gathering will cover during its several days of existence – and do so in a thought-provoking and argument-provoking way. It should ideally come at the beginning of the conference it addresses, and it should cover the main theme or themes that they conference is about. Or the word gets applied loosely and uselessly to any speech that isn’t a breakout, that takes place in plenary session.Īnd here we begin to find something essential in the idea of a keynote speech. The dictionary definition implies two things mainly: the idea of fundamentality – the keynote establishes, literally, the key in music, and primacy – the keynote comes first.īut that doesn’t happen all the time or even most of the time in conferences today – we sometimes start with a keynote speech, but just as often they come at the end of the gathering. The traditional meaning of the keynote speech was that it began a conference or convocation and outlined the themes to be covered in ways that got the participants talking and thinking along the right lines. They are often present, but no one would seriously argue that they are essential to the keynote. Does giving a keynote speech mean a huge audience, giant IMEG screens, and a booming sound system? Well, those are often involved, when the numbers are large, but there’s nothing essential about those attributes – unless the ego of the speaker demands it.ĭoes a keynote speech necessarily involve slides, video, or other such visual aids? Of course not. Let’s dispense with some of the easy misconceptions first. I ask because keynote speeches take so many forms it seems worth it to ponder the nature of the genre for a few minutes to see if we can find something essential in all those variations. ![]() What is a keynote speech? That’s not a trick question.
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