August dates booking now

Eight hundred people in a gym. Forty minutes.

They are tired before you start. They are checking email by minute six. And this year you have to say something honest about artificial intelligence to a room full of people who are already anxious about it.

That is the hardest forty minutes in your year. I have stood at that microphone as the superintendent, and I know exactly how the room feels when it goes wrong.

Check August availability What actually happens

Three kickoffs

The moment a year gets its tone.

Whatever happens in that first session is the story your people tell each other for the next ten months. It is worth getting right.

August · Booking now

Back to School

The staff kickoff that does not feel like a staff kickoff.

Every teacher in your district is already using AI, already unsure whether they are allowed to, and already tired of being told they are behind. This keynote does not scold them and does not hype the technology. It tells them the truth — that the machine does not know their students, and that is exactly why they still matter — and then it sends them into the year on their feet.

For: district-wide staff days · certificated and classified kickoffs · new-teacher institutes · convocations

January · Booking from September

Back to Work

The all-hands people do not dread.

Your organization comes back in January to a memo about efficiency and a slide about AI adoption, and morale drops before the coffee is cold. This keynote reframes the year around the people doing the work — what stays human, what the technology actually changes, and why the answer is not to move faster but to decide better.

For: corporate all-hands · return-to-office · agency and nonprofit staff days · new-year kickoffs

Year-round

Project Launch

Day one of the thing everybody is quietly dreading.

New initiative. New system. New leadership. Half the room has been through three of these and watched all three die. This keynote is built for that room: it names the skepticism out loud, earns the right to ask for buy-in, and gives the launch an emotional starting line instead of a slide deck.

For: transformation launches · technology rollouts · mergers and reorganizations · new superintendent or CEO introductions

The forty minutes

What actually happens in the room.

Minute 0

Music. Live.

Not a walk-on track. Performed. The room looks up from their phones because something unexpected is happening, and unexpected is the only currency you have in a gym at 8am.

Minutes 5–15

I tell them the truth about AI.

No hype. No doom. The machine does not know your students, your customers, or your mission. It produces confident answers about people it has never met. Somebody still has to sign those answers. That somebody is in this room.

Minutes 15–30

I tell them why they still matter.

This is the part people cry at. Thirty years of leading a public institution, and the thing that mattered was never the technology — it was the adult who noticed the kid. That does not automate. Say it to eight hundred exhausted people and watch what happens.

Minutes 30–40

Music. They are standing.

An original piece, performed live, that turns the argument into something they can feel. They walk out talking to each other instead of scrolling. That is the whole product.

Music. Message. Movement.™ Three things, in that order, on purpose. The full keynote catalog →

Why this speaker

Three things that never come together.

A superintendent who actually did this. Thirty years leading a public institution, ending at Coachella Valley Unified — one of the poorest districts in America. $40M+ in grants. A device for every child. WiFi routers on school buses so those devices would actually work. Named among America’s Top 100 Most Innovative Superintendents and recognized at the White House by President Obama. I have stood at that microphone on that morning, with that agenda, in front of those people.
A real AI authority. Not a motivational speaker who read an article. Author of Rage Against the AI Machine™, and the person districts and boards hire to build their AI governance.
A recording artist who was actually on MTV. Keyboardist and co-writer for Xavion — Elektra Records, 1984, and the first African-American rock band to appear on the network. Toured with Hall & Oates. The music is not a gimmick bolted onto a speech. It is the delivery mechanism, and it is the reason they remember any of it.

Motivational speakers cannot talk credibly about AI. AI experts cannot move a room. Musicians have never run a district. Booking three people costs more and works less.

The proof

You do not have to take my word for it.

In 1984 I was the keyboardist and co-writer for Xavion — signed to Elektra, managed by Tommy Mottola, touring with Hall & Oates. Our single went into rotation on MTV.

Xavion was the first African-American rock band to appear on MTV. Four years before Living Colour. I performed under my legal name, Derwin Adams.

Xavion — “Eat Your Heart Out” (Elektra, 1984). Keyboards and synth: Derwin Adams.

When you book me to close your event with a live performance, this is the musician you are booking. The music is not a hobby I picked up after the superintendency. It is the thing I did first.

Thirty years later

I put the internet on a school bus.

I was Superintendent of Coachella Valley Unified — one of the poorest districts in America. I secured more than $40 million in grants and put a device in the hands of every student and teacher.

Then the children took those devices home to houses with no internet, and the devices did nothing. So we mounted WiFi routers on school buses and parked them in the neighborhoods overnight. Children sat on their front steps and did their homework off a bus.

The U.S. Department of Education named me one of the Top 100 Most Innovative Superintendents in the nation. President Obama recognized it personally, at the White House.

The White House, 2014.

Two videos. Forty-two years apart. The same man.

On one of them I am playing synth on MTV. On the other a President of the United States is thanking me for what I did for poor children.

That is who is walking into your gym in August. Not a speaker who read a book about this. Someone who lived every part of it.

TEDx

This is not a theory. This is a Tuesday.

On the TEDx stage I did not describe the music-integrated keynote. I performed it.

Dr. Darryl S. Adams speaking at TEDx behind an Akai keyboard — TEDx. The keyboard is not a prop.

The talk was about connectivity — a district where children had devices and no internet, and what we did about it. And then I played them the song I wrote about it.

Let the music give the message.
In the movement is the lesson.
Let the learning spark your pleasure.
Because the Music. Message. Movement.™ is the treasure.

Performed live at TEDx.

Music. Message. Movement.™ is not a marketing framework. It is what I already do, it is on a TEDx screen, and there are photographs of the audience watching it happen.

Investment

What it costs

Scaled by audience size. Includes the keynote, the live performance, a pre-event planning call with your team, and tailoring to your district or organization.

Up to 300Single site, school, department, or leadership team

$7,500

300 – 1,000District staff day, mid-size all-hands, regional convening

$12,500

1,000 – 2,500Large district convocation, major conference general session

$18,500

2,500+Arena-scale kickoff, statewide conference, multi-district event

$25,000

Travel billed separately for events outside Southern California. Virtual delivery available at reduced fee. Districts booking a kickoff receive the AI Leadership Readiness Assessment™ for their full cabinet at no charge — because the keynote raises the question, and someone should be able to answer it on Monday.

Check availability

August is three weeks away

Check availability.

Tell us about the event. You will have a response within one business day — with a date and a fee, not a brochure. August dates are limited and go in the order they are asked for.

Booking for someone else? Forward this page — dradamsglobal.com/kickoff