Keynote Speaker Jan McInnis Announces in-person meetings are back and she has five tips to remember once you get in front of people live! June seems to be the date that most of McInnis's conferences and conventions will be taking place. Some of them are moved over from 2020 and some of them are new bookings.

"The meetings are back, the meetings are back!" McInnis quips. Having pivoted to virtual keynotes and Master of Ceremonies duties, she'll now pivot again and go back to in-person and/or hybrid conferences.

If you're going to present keynotes, or pretty much speak in front of any group in-person, she recommends paying attention to these 5 tips so that your in-person event is a hit. McInnis says you should:

1. Adjust your material. You may need to cut your keynote down. When I went to virtual, I had to add material because there was not much audience interaction aside from the chat box. Now I need to make sure to leave time for interaction, which means some of the material I added needs to be deleted.

2. Don't look at the cameras. If there are cameras in the room, make sure you look at the audience, not into the camera. Virtual keynotes trained us to look into the camera or we'd lose audience connection, but now if we do that, it'll look like we're looking over the audience's heads. . .and, well, it just looks weird.

3. Be flexible with your start and stop times. I was on a lot of virtual events where you HAD to start and stop on time because the platform would cut you off and go on to the next speaker. But in-person events lend themselves to being off schedule more because people can run over or under their time and the stage won't switch to the next speaker. Arrive early and expect to wait.

4. Be entertaining. From Netflix to YouTube, people watched a LOT of entertaining content. If you didn't think you needed to use humor before quarantine, you were mistaken, but probably still got booked. But now, after quarantine, you're going to be left in the dust. People are used to being at least a little entertained and engaged.

5. Pay more attention to your outfit than your hair. On a virtual program, your hair takes up a lot of the screen so even one hair out of place is distracting, but in-person it's not that noticeable. Also, virtual audiences have no idea if your shirt is wrinkled from the shoulders down or if you're wearing sneakers . . ask me how I know this! LOL. Now that you're back on a stage, pay attention to the bigger picture instead of the details.

That's the quick tips! Heading back to in-person events will be fun, but we have to forget some of the stuff we just learned about speaking virtually.

About Jan McInnis

Jan McInnis is a noted comedian, keynote speaker, author, and Master of Ceremonies. She has worked with hundreds of associations, corporations, and businesses across North America. She was featured in the Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, and The Washington Post, and is the author of two books, namely "Convention Comedian- Stories and Wisdom from Two Decades of Chicken Dinners and Comedy Clubs" and "Finding the Funny Fast- How to Create Quick Humor to Connect with Clients, Coworkers, and Crowds." McInnis is also an accomplished comedy writer who has written for many people, places, and events including the Tonight Show monologue with Jay Leno.