As an attendee, my personal data might be relevant:
I have gained practice deliberately acquiring new habits and soliciting useful feedback. Before camp I had no specific plans for self-improvement other than “work harder”, and now I actually keep track of what works and what doesn’t. For instance, I am deliberately improving my public speaking skills by giving talks on Minicamp material once a week to a limited audience. I would place a bet that the “alternate universe me” who instead attended Inspirational Retreat X (IRX) would not have had lasting effects nearly a year later.
I am deliberately extending my network of contacts. Speaking to new people was a skill that I didn’t have pre-Minicamp. On this point, “alternate universe me” could have reasonably acquired similar skills from IRX, but I have relatively strong reason to believe that those skills would be much more of a black box than they are now. I usually leave workshops inspired, but I can tell if it’s a poor workshop when I try to apply the skills I learned and discover that it’s not as easy as it seemed to be according to the instructor’s examples. There is a difference between “explaining something so that it sounds good” and “explaining something so someone else can do it”. I attend swing dancing workshops about once a month, and Minicamp never once felt inapplicable like several of the lessons I’ve taken over the years. More personal data: I talked a local CEO into letting me give a presentation on rationality to the class he teaches on the side at Penn State, which is something I would have never even thought about doing before Minicamp.
This comment has already gone on too long, but I hope that gives you some useful information.
Summary: Minicamp’s general perspective on teaching skills is more effective than the vast majority of small workshops I attend because the instructors taught skills rather than inspiration. Inspiration came from trying their skills and discovering that they worked, which is surprisingly rare.
As an attendee, my personal data might be relevant:
I have gained practice deliberately acquiring new habits and soliciting useful feedback. Before camp I had no specific plans for self-improvement other than “work harder”, and now I actually keep track of what works and what doesn’t. For instance, I am deliberately improving my public speaking skills by giving talks on Minicamp material once a week to a limited audience. I would place a bet that the “alternate universe me” who instead attended Inspirational Retreat X (IRX) would not have had lasting effects nearly a year later.
I am deliberately extending my network of contacts. Speaking to new people was a skill that I didn’t have pre-Minicamp. On this point, “alternate universe me” could have reasonably acquired similar skills from IRX, but I have relatively strong reason to believe that those skills would be much more of a black box than they are now. I usually leave workshops inspired, but I can tell if it’s a poor workshop when I try to apply the skills I learned and discover that it’s not as easy as it seemed to be according to the instructor’s examples. There is a difference between “explaining something so that it sounds good” and “explaining something so someone else can do it”. I attend swing dancing workshops about once a month, and Minicamp never once felt inapplicable like several of the lessons I’ve taken over the years. More personal data: I talked a local CEO into letting me give a presentation on rationality to the class he teaches on the side at Penn State, which is something I would have never even thought about doing before Minicamp.
This comment has already gone on too long, but I hope that gives you some useful information.
Summary: Minicamp’s general perspective on teaching skills is more effective than the vast majority of small workshops I attend because the instructors taught skills rather than inspiration. Inspiration came from trying their skills and discovering that they worked, which is surprisingly rare.