I’m at a brain workshop this weekend. Pretty much all the weekends in February is taken up for interviews and TEDxAustin so I have been feeling pretty tired actually. It looks like March will stay the same way w/ Mardi Gras in New Orleans, baseball spring training, SXSW, and a photo workshop w/ The Strobist and Joe McNally.
It’s a three-day workshop and I just finished Day 2. I’m hoping tomorrow to be a lot better since it covers 50% of the material. There are things I’m impressed with so far and there are things I really don’t care for at the moment. I’ll refrain from total judgement presently since technically I’m not finished.
It’s called Dynamic Mind Workshop. A buddy of mine got involved w/ it and is actually working to become an instructor at the moment. I thought since I’m going back to school in the fall it would be useful. The only reason I’ve waited this long is b/c it’s a 3-day long workshop and I haven’t been able to clear my schedule due to work and interviews and what not.
Let’s just get the negativity out of the way. I’m actually a little upset right now with some of the material presented in the workshop after I went through all the trouble of clearing my schedule. There are different sessions on music, nutrition, vitamins, drugs/alcohol/smoking and its effect on the brain. If you’re saying to yourself right now: “you went to a workshop for THAT?!” you know what, my feeling exactly. All this is pretty common sense that I’ve either already know or have been exposed to before. Just the music topic was two back to back one-hour sessions. Please, just give me the PowerPoint print out and have me read it on my own… BORED x MAX. If it was up to me, seriously I could’ve covered it in 15-20 minutes.
Speaking of PowerPoint, just some suggestions… at least by todays’ standards, it’s pretty awful. Not very clean, you have text transitions floating across the screen here and there, audio, sound effects here and there… it’s really quite distracting. Not to even mention the ugly WordArt. Now, Warren Chaney, the creator of the program is my guess in the 70’s (judging by his Linkedin profile that he was first in college in 1960, 50 years ago and nice round number for college age is 20), so yeah he’s old. Update your slides, man. While you’re at it… update the website, too pls.
The program and presentation are meant for all different kinds of audience but c’mon, adapt a little bit when you’ve got half of the class that are either still in school or just out. Do you really need to spend so much focus on Alzheimers and dementia??
There are components that are fundamental and beneficial to know and understand for your progress. There was a session on parts of the brain and what function each area is responsible for, etc. That was cool, to think about how to use all parts of your brain when you’re performing a task.
The interactive part, where you learn memory techniques that involve using visual images to associate with objects and numbers is hella lot more interesting. I’ve already been exposed to this long ago in Dale Carnegie Training so it wasn’t THAT mind blowing. The reading technique is cool, too. Unfortunately, I’ve also already been exposed to stuff like that before.
*Ok, full disclaimer… I’m not your typical audience member. It’s not like I have brain power oozing out of my nostrils, it’s just… idk, I just happened to have known all this before already. You might still find this really beneficial.
Anyway, as a marketing guy and presenter I would do things so differently, but I’m still looking forward to Day 3 and reporting back to you what I’ve learned.
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