Tips for a great keynote lecture:

(1) Use powerpoint only for text that you are going to read aloud. Make sure there are no images.

(2) Make sure the quotes you put on powerpoint slides are lengthy. If the quotes are awkward translations that you did yourself, and you have them on the screen for a long time, you will earn bonus points as the audience follows along your monotone reading of those slides and second guesses your translations.

(3) Announce you are going to "summarize" a chapter of a book you are now writing. Nothing is as scintillating as a summary.

(4) Summarize the plots of several novels in a monotone. We all love plot summaries.

(5) Make reference to super-familiar ideas: Benedict Anderson's idea of nations as "imagined communities" or Foucault's notion of power as "capillary." You wouldn't want to excite your audience with an idea they aren't familiar with already.

(6) Don't project any emotion to the audience; never interrupt yourself with off-the-cuff remarks. Don't act too excited. No eye contact with any member of the audience.

(7) Just read the text that you have written. Just read it out loud. Nothing more. That is your job: to read the text that you have brought to read to us and show us fucking power point slides with your bad translations.

THIS EXAMPLE IS PURELY FICTIONAL. ALL RESEMBLANCE TO ACTUAL KEYNOTE SPEAKERS, LIVING OR DEAD, IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL. FORTUNATELY NOBODY ACTUALLY DOES THIS.