Do not use ethnic, racist, political or religious jokes. Include a joke that helps bring back attention of audience or as a way to lighten up your remarks. We all can use a good laugh from a well timed, funny joke.

5. Self effacing humor- it is better to admit you made a mistake than to admit that you are one. One of my lines as a mother of five is: For someone who isn’t Catholic, I sure did my share for pope! Phyllis Diller is in Guinness Book of World Records as having most laughs per minute. A laugh is measured by:

5 points if everyone is laughing and applauding 4 points if everyone is laughing and there's a smattering of applause 3 points if everyone laughs but there's no applause 2 points if some people are laughing 1 point for a titter or giggle

6.Mime- Marcel Marceau makes us laugh and moves us. Charlie Chaplin was an all time great without using spoken word.

7.Move Your Body Try lifting your nose, look off to side, jut out bottom of your jaw, and notice how you become arrogant or aloof, Take a wide stance, shift your hips forward, and now you’ve just gained 50 pounds. The use of body movements will help to visually enhance your remarks.

8.Repetitive oral recitation- (repeat after me, Remember, if you can see funny, you can be funny. Repeat a particular sentence throughout your presentation to encourage audience retention.

9. Use taped music for a stretch break. Get audience to sing a funny song. Pass out words to a song. Lighten up your attendees have some fun and your audience retention will increase. Don’t be afraid to be theatrical or silly. It’s why we pay actors big bucks; and your audiences won’t forget you. Be outrageous. It’s only place that isn’t crowded.

10. Group exercise a fun way to conclude your presentation is to use a group exercise. Use football huddle to get group to repeat a cheer or an affirmation to take some action.

Join a fre*e Teleclass to learn how to speak like a pro on June 30, 2004 from 8-9 p.m. (EST) http://www.schrift.com eleclasses/index.htm

There is no point pretending that timesheet information and collection is glamorous. It isn't. It should just be part of normal mundane fabric of business. It should be routine and boring. But most importantly it should be quick, easy, and provide no disincentive to doing it. Good computerized systems should offer all of this.

Timesheet Automation The most basic benefit that a computerized timesheet system gives is one of automation, timesheet information is entered into a computer rather than onto paper. This eliminated need for people to transcribe their timesheet information from a diary onto a paper form, and then for administration staff to re-enter this information into a job costing system. The computerization allows you to completely eliminate middle steps. Staff enter information directly into job costing system.

The next logical step of computerization is to leverage off of computer to provide a host of other benefits. This includes interlocks like preventing people from booking time to projects that dont exist, or projects that are closed, or projects they should not be booking time to. It allows project managers to access live data showing actual time spent on their projects, this data can be manipulated and visualized in different ways using other computer software. It can even interface directly with dedicated project management software.

Other benefits can include automatic timing of work, popup information showing specific project information helping timesheet accuracy, daily timesheets, reminders telling people to fill in their timesheets, integration with messaging, email, and web, and live integration with accounting packages.

Conclusions By themselves each of these points makes a good argument for moving to a computerized timesheet system. Taken together they are truly compelling. Increased accuracy and reduction of billing cycle means that a computerized system can usually measure its payoff in just a few months. For any company that does bill its time, it is should not be an option any longer, it is a simple next step. Interested in looking at some low cost alternatives? Why not take a look at Timesheets Lite or Timesheets MTS. These are low cost systems ideally suited to small company.

Mark Nemtsas Moving Target Software Get low cost, efficient, timesheet software!

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