I wish I could claim I was the best, most memorable speaker at the recent all-hands for my group. I wasn’t even close. That belonged to a developer who says his outside work friends call him Fozzie. Fozzie gets his nickname from Fozzie Bear of the Muppets fame, since they both have such similar senses of humor.

If you’ve read this blog any, you get that I’m a pretty big smart ass. I’m not Mr. Subtle. That’s the way the General Manager in my group is, too. It’s the way almost everyone who spoke who tried to be funny at this event was. We’re Microsoft. We beat you over the head with everything.

Fozzie is the exact opposite. He had a ton of corny jokes - you have to be a tech geek to get them so I won’t bother repeating - but they were funny. And lots of puns. It was very offbeat, the type of thing you had to think for a few moments before getting. Fozzie has absolutely amazing timing. Hardcore smart ass timing is easier because people get the joke right away (or not), so you just have to wait till they’re done laughing. With the offbeat humor, since there’s a delay as the audience gets the joke and then laughs later, the speaker has to wait for it a bit, too. And you’re more likely to miss the mark with the offbeat stuff and get no laughs, you can’t wait too long. It’s fractions of a second we’re talking about here, but it makes the difference.

Fozzie isn’t an unsubtle smartass and didn’t pretend to be. He was far better off with well delivered corny jokes and puns than trying to imitate the rest of us.