What is a keynote speech?  That’s not a trick question.  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.

Let’s dispense with some of the easy misconceptions first.  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.

Does a keynote speech necessarily involve slides, video, or other such visual aids? Of course not. They are often present, but no one would seriously argue that they are essential to the keynote.

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. 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.

But 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. Or the word gets applied loosely and uselessly to any speech that isn’t a breakout, that takes place in plenary session.

And here we begin to find something essential in the idea of a keynote speech. 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. 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.

Making sense of a conference that you attend is hard work. You rush from session to session, trying to pack as much as possible in, and you fret about not having enough time to network. Very quickly, you get information-overloaded with new material and begin to wonder how you’re going to remember it all. With all that going on, a speech that thoroughly and helpfully previews the conference and tells you what to listen for would be very useful, wouldn’t it?

If there is such a speech, it’s more often given by the CEO of the company putting on the event, or someone else footing the bill, rather than an outside expert with deep understanding of the topic. And those CEOs have too many tasks to fulfill to do a good job keynoting. They are thinking about their company and its place in the world and they want to talk that up more than they typically care about the general topic at hand.

The ideal keynote speech introduces a topic to an audience at the start of a conference. The speech answers the following questions:  Why is this topic important? Why are we gathered in this particular way to address this topic? What might we expect the rest of the speakers to cover – what should we, the attendees, be on the lookout for? And what are the most important questions to keep in mind as we talk and think about this topic for the next few days?

I can’t remember the last time I heard a keynote speech actually address those issues. To give such a speech well requires a deep understanding of the topic, of course, but also a willingness to go beyond one’s specific expertise and point of view to define the entire topic and its possible approaches. And what speaker is willing to do that in this sectarian age?