Speaking / Culture Karaoke

The keynote that breaks the script.

A live, unrepeatable keynote where the audience sets the agenda. Your people request and vote for the culture questions they most want answered. Whatever they push to the top is what I tackle, live, in that order, every question paired with a song. A different show every single time.

Talk to me about your eventSee how a conference runs it
The chart on the screen behind the stage: the room’s questions at their voted positions, with the movement arrows beside them.

The typical keynote playlist

Six frustrations every delegate has felt, and quietly accepted as the cost of a conference.

Playlist

The typical keynote playlist

Every conference · 6 tracks, 24 min · you’ve sat through all of them

Recommended for youCulture KaraokeYour room, live. A different setlist every time. 60 min.

Now playing

Death by PowerPoint

0:273:47
 

The idea at the heart of it

Improvisation isn’t the absence of skill. It’s the highest expression of it.

You can only be spontaneous if you have a plan. You can only improvise if you have the expertise. What’s prepared is the material: every question in the songbook is written, researched and ready. What the room decides is which of them get answered at all, in what order, and which of their own questions join them.

Not just an hour on stage

The journey begins weeks out and continues after the event has ended. A build-up your delegates are part of, a session they guide, and something that’s still working when they get back to their desks.

2 weeks out

The Songbook

Delegates submit the culture questions they care about, the ones they’d only whisper about in corridors, and vote the best ones up. What matters most rises to the top. That’s the plan.

  • A join code in the delegate email. No app, no account, no name.
  • Questions open two to three weeks out.
  • Three votes each, spent on whatever they actually want answered.
  • Near-duplicates are folded together, so they climb instead of splitting the vote.
  • Requests not in the songbook are added as covers to be voted on.
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Seriously credible. Seriously fun.

Most keynotes are made to pick one. The details are where this one refuses. Moments that make it safe to be honest and moments that make the room laugh. Neither is an accident, and both are why a format built on karaoke is more than a metaphor.

The screen during a question flagged as explicit: a parental advisory sticker, a dedication read out, and the COVER tag showing the audience wrote it.

  1. The explicit sticker

    Nobody signs their name to anything, so the honest questions turn up. If somebody submits a spicy one, it goes up on the screen wearing a parental advisory sticker, exactly like a record that earned one. It’s a joke and it’s also permission. The question people were only ever going to discuss at happy hour earns its place in the room instead.

  2. Dedications

    Every question can carry one, the way requests have been done on the radio since the 50s. For everyone on the third floor. For my last toxic manager. They’re read out with the question. It’s a guaranteed laugh, and it’s written by the room.

  3. A cover

    Somebody in the audience wrote this one. Requests that aren’t in the songbook go in as covers and get voted on like everything else, which keeps content relevant and timely.

Shane Michael Hatton on stage, mid-keynote, in front of a full-width orange screen.

Who takes the mic

Me, your room, and whatever they ask for

Author of Let’s Talk Culture and Lead the Room, featured in Harvard Business Review and Forbes, and more stages than I can count across the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the US. Every question in the songbook sits on research I’ve done, a book I’ve written, or a room I’ve stood in. That’s what makes the improvisation safe.

“This guy is really funny, really clever, there are a million take outs, he’s absolutely brilliant.”

Maz Farrelly
Talk to me about your event

The songbook

Over eighty questions, written and ready.

Every one researched, paired with a song, and waiting for a room to vote it up. Or the audience can request their own.

Now singing · Power Ballads

Let It Go · Idina Menzel

this one goes out to everyone who did it themselves last week

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Built for the format

Runs on its own platform.

Culture Karaoke runs on its own platform, built for the format: the songbook, the voting, the chart on the screen, the run sheet behind it and the page that lands afterwards. Your delegates need a code and a browser. Nothing else.

  • No app, no accounts, no email addresses collected from your people.
  • Works on the phone they already have, in the browser they already use.
  • I bring the platform. You bring a screen and a room.

Book it for your event

Talk to me about your room

A line about the event is plenty: where, when, roughly how many people, and what the room is wrestling with. I’ll come back to you within a couple of days.

Already have an event code? Join the setlist here.