Would you like to grow older AND wiser? Do you want to add years to your life... and life to your years? Would you welcome a life filled with amazing, amusing, aging grace (how sweet the sound!)? If so, you'll love this learning-filled, fun-fueled, involving session that explores ten positive, powerful, predictive, proven, practical prescriptions to help you intentionally create a rich, vital, and significant life. You will explore the emotional riches of aging well, puncture common myth-conceptions about aging, reframe negative situations into positive possibilities as you optimize optimism, exercise your mind, mind your exercise, increase your R.Q. (Resilience Quotient), and learn tips to tickle stress before it tackles you. Live life laughing, because we don't stop laughing when we grow old... we grow old when we stop laughing. Remember, s/he who laughs... lasts!

Margie Ingram, Vice President and Director of Special Programs at The HUMOR Project, is one of the pioneers in the fields of stress management and the humor-resilience connection. Margie is a popular speaker and workshop leader throughout the U.S. and abroad.

She is also a very successful life coach helping individuals and small groups to create fulfilling lives, move gracefully through life transitions, identify and build on personal and professional strengths, and overcome obstacles by optimizing optimism with a touch of humor.

Margie has been an educator for the past 40 years. A public school teacher from 1968-1975, she went on to supervise student teachers and teach grad courses at many colleges on effective teaching methods and developing effective classroom environments. Margie's speaking career, which began 35 years ago, grew out of her love of teaching. Her programs are lively, engaging, and practical as she creates opportunities for participants to apply the content to their immediate lives and jobs.

Margie has also served as coordinator of The HUMOR Project's international conference on "The Positive Power of Humor, Hope and Healing" and international workshop on "HUMOResilience: Tickling Stress Before It Tackles You," which have attracted 21,000+ people from all 50 states, 6 continents, and the Moon (Moonwalking astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell).

Margie was honored with the Distinguished Service Award from the Reed Foundation and the Prevention Council as well as the Hometown Hero Award. In her spare time, Margie loves canoeing, walking, completing challenging puzzles, and spending time with family and good friends. She practices what she teaches about creating intentional balance in life.

This five-star, Oscar-worthy seminar focuses on engaging, effective, and entertaining presentation techniques from the worlds of stage, screen, and song. Based on his Show Biz Training book and renowned ASTD International Conference presentations, Lenn will share his lauded Learnertainment® model for putting pizzazz into your teaching, training, and speaking. Along the way, you will discover ways to accelerate learning and accelerate laughter: 12 attention-grabbing techniques, the 8 emotive show biz principles that drive learning, the OFFBEAT filter as the guide to selecting show biz techniques for specific learning environments, ways that comedy creates memorable messages, and how props and illusions illuminate content. You will leave this session with a smile on your face along with an action plan for adding show biz to learning environments.

Lenn Millbower, the Learnertainment® Trainer, is an expert in applying show biz techniques to learning. Formerly with Disney University, Disney Institute, and Walt Disney Entertainment, Lenn has been an accomplished and popular entertainer throughout the U.S. and on the high seas (as comedian, magician, musician). As president of Offbeat Training®, this corporate trainer is an in-demand speaker for organizations and associations including ASCD, SHRM, and ASTD. Lenn is the author of Show Biz Training, Cartoons for Trainers, and Training with a Beat and is the composer and musical arranger of Game Show Themes for Trainers.

At one time or another, all of us have tried to persuade someone to do something. Persuasion is a conscious effort to influence the beliefs, attitudes, and ultimately, the behaviors of another person(s). Whether you are a leader who must share a vision with staff, a sales professional who wants to close more sales, a parent or spouse who wants to make a point, or a motorist who wants to talk your way out of a speeding ticket, having influential communication skills is essential. Jim will share magical and meaningful persuasion secrets that you can use immediately to improve your communication- including the importance of credibility, how to frame your goals so that you find common ground, the value of connecting emotionally with your audience, and techniques to transform conflict into collaboration when dealing with difficult people.

Jim Snack, CSP, is a magical presenter who was named outstanding teacher by the International Communication Association. As a professional magician, Jim has also won top awards for performing both stage magic and sleight-of-hand. With degrees in theater and communications, Jim combines the two in his work, presenting custom-designed speeches and seminars for business, educational, health care, government, and association audiences. Whether he is doing a keynote on "The Magic of Change" or speaking on creativity, communication, conflict management, emotional intelligence or teamwork, Jim's presentations are always a captivating blend of magic and message that evoke standing ovations. In fact, he was selected by Dottie Walters' Sharing Ideas magazine as "Consummate Speaker of the Year." Jim is definitely the Wizard of Aha's!

Josh Billings once said, "There ain't much fun in medicine, but there's a heck of a lot of medicine in fun." Leslie will disprove the first part and prove the second part of this statement. This warm, wise, witty, and wonderful woman will address such topics as: the latest research on the physiological benefits of humor and laughter; a "funny way" to treat patients (cutting-edge clinical applications of humor); terrific, tried-and-true tips for injecting humor in hospitals, nursing homes, rehab centers, hospice, and home health care; how to avoid common obstacles to putting humor in health care; a step-by-step guided tour of how to successfully implement high-impact, systematic, and systemic therapeutic humor techniques (hospital humor rooms, comedy carts, laughter libraries, caring clown troupes, etc.); and much more.

Leslie Gibson, R.N., recipient of the Clinical Nurse Excellence Award, was one of this conference's grant recipients in 1988. She used that not-so-funny money to create one of the world's most successful, on-going therapeutic hospital humor programs, which includes 32 comedy carts and teams of volunteers and caring clowns. Leslie has produced two videotapes that focus on the development of an on-going, systemic therapeutic humor program in a health care environment and is the author of the CEU-approved Healthy Humor Home Study Course. At our 1997 conference, Leslie received a standing ovation as she received the "Making a Difference: Humor in Action" Award. For the past ten years, Leslie has been the Community Liaison at Hospice, where she founded The Hospice "Smile Team" and "Laughing Legacy" program.

How can you cultivate your personal creativity and inspire organizational innovation? Come to this session and you'll see! Alan will guide you in a hands-on tour of stimulating and sizzling secrets in the Land of Eureka: overcoming blocks to creativity; identifying characteristics of highly creative people; practicing 32 ways to improve creative thinking skills; experimenting with 12 different tools to generate 144 to a million ideas in minutes; learning 4 systems for transforming wild and whacky ideas into real solutions; discovering 12 ways to jump-start your imagination and to be creative on demand ("Don't just sit there... be creative!"); recognizing 6 techniques to set up a creative corporate culture that increases the quality and quantity of ideas employees generate; and having fun with the connection between playfulness and creativity (playing with ideas).

Robert Alan Black, Ph.D., CSP, is a popular speaker who has done 3200+ presentations and has traveled throughout the U.S. and 71 countries on six continents (including 5 trips completely around the world). Alan earned his doctorate in creative thinking under the tutelage of Dr. E. Paul Torrance and Dr. Sid Parnes, two of the pioneering giants in the creativity field. Alan is a jack and master of many trades- in fact, he has held 47 different jobs in the past 47 years- including licensed architect, cartoonist, janitor, designer, TV news writer and editor, advertising art director, and college professor. Author or co-author of 25 books on creativity and leadership, Alan has also had 400+ articles published. His book, Broken Crayons: Break Your Crayons and Draw Outside the Lines, has been translated/published in five countries. This self-employed creative thinking consultant is proud that he has been voted "Employee of the Month" a record 277 months in a row.

Open to participants in all 5 Pre-Conference Workshop sessions.