Thanks to everyone (and particularly the organizers) for a fantastic weekend!
Strongest sign of this being a good event: usually I feel drained after a social event, and by the end of the official program I was feeling that, but by the time I got home I was suddenly feeling social and energetic again. Did you people slip something into my drink to make me an extrovert?
(Okay, a lot of it was probably due to the book on charisma that I read just before the meetup and which gave me loads of confidence and useful techniques for getting into the right mindset for being social. But you all being so awesome made them much easier to use! So there. <3)
Some comments of what could’ve been better:
There were lots of people around, and I’d have loved having a chance to talk with everyone. However, a large part of our waking time was taken up by lecture/workshop-type content, during which there wasn’t much of an opportunity for being actively social, Saturday’s introduction start notwithstanding. I also felt mentally drained after focusing on such content for the whole day, which made it harder to be actively social afterwards: the Fermi calculation contest felt especially energy-draining, since the time limit was short and stressful enough that I basically just looked at my team’s activity from the side.
This isn’t to say that the lectures/workshops weren’t interesting! The “supercharging your learning” and mnemonics one in particular felt like they might be valuable in the future. But regardless, I think I’d have preferred a stronger focus on social activities. One of the parts about the meetup that I found the most enjoyable was the “Socratic Dialogue” that I ran into on accident, when people engaged in it had taken over my room on Friday. I was a little disappointed that the official program didn’t include anything like that.
Suggestions for improvement: favor social activities for the programmed content, at the expense of lecture/workshop-type content. Try to set up such a set of activities that everyone ends up getting introduced and everyone talks with everyone: as it was, there were some people who I simply never got a good chance to talk with. (Maybe the introductory lunch on Friday had more of this kind of thing? Too bad we Finns missed it. :( )
To the extent that there are lectures, limiting their length would be a good thing. Research apparently suggests that around 25 minutes is the maximum length for people to maintain an optimal focus on lecture-type material. A shorter duration would also force lecturers to focus on the essentials and cut peripheral content.
Suggestions for improvement: enforce a 25-minute limit on how long someone is allowed to lecture before they are required to either end their talk, or somehow engage their audience with e.g. workshop-style activities.
The meditation exercise would probably have been a better off on Saturday, since meditation while sleep-deprived does not necessarily produce good results, and Sunday morning was probably the time when everyone could be expected to be the most sleep-deprived.
Suggestions for improvement: try to schedule meditation exercises to a time when people are likely to be well-rested. (This may admittedly be an impossible task, but at least try to have them at a time when people are relatively well-rested.)
--
One last thing: subjectively at least I felt like I got my social skills to a much better level than on some previous occasions. But I was also mentally drained at times and couldn’t always keep it up, plus there were moments when I caught myself doing what felt like mistakes, like looking away from someone too fast or not saying hi when I had the chance, etc. So general feedback of how my social skills came across, by anyone who spoke or otherwise interacted with me, would be appreciated. Here’s my anonymous feedback form that you can use for this, though of course it may be difficult to stay truly anonymous: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Z2he5Tziy7OuVCGbtD2VHrI4U014sm-DRsLFw-A9dH4/viewform .
BONUS: References for some of the things that I mentioned in my comments during the “supercharging learning” workshop.
“Too rapid feedback can be harmful”:
“This research does not mean, however, that greater frequency of feedback is always better. Again, timeliness of the feedback is a significant factor. For example, consider a study in which college students were learning to write mathematical functions in a spreadsheet application (Mathan & Koedinger, 2005). The particular goal for students’ learning in this situation was not only that they be able to write these functions accurately but also that they be able to recognize and fix their own errors. Students who received feedback immediately after they made a mistake scored lower on final assessments compared to students who received “delayed” feedback. Although surprising at first, this result makes sense when one realizes that the immediate feedback group was missing the opportunity to practice recognizing and repairing their own errors. In contrast, the students receiving delayed feedback had a chance to fix their own errors so they had more practice at the corresponding skills. That is, when the delayed feedback group made errors, feedback was given only when they (a) showed sufficient signs of not having recognized their error or (b) made multiple failed attempts at fixing their error. In this way, one could argue that even though it was not immediate, their feedback was given in a more timely manner relative to the learning goals at hand.”
(Susan Ambrose et al., How Learning Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching, citing Mathan & Koedinger: Fostering the Intelligent Novice: Learning From Errors With Metacognitive Tutoring.
See the cited paper for a broader discussion. Note that based on the paper, Mathan & Koedinger would probably somewhat disagree on Ambrose et al’s characterization of the worse-performing group as receiving “delayed” feedback: Mathan & Koedinger would argue that the feedback wasn’t so much immediate, but rather reflected a different conceptual model of the best kind of feedback. From their description, though, it is true that the worse-performing group did get feedback at an earlier stage than the better-performing one.)
“Shorter and easier math problems are better than longer and harder ones”: don’t have conclusive evidence since the following paper discusses a method that’s broader than just changing exercises into shorter and more numerous ones, but see regardless pages 4-5 of http://icme12.org/upload/UpFile2/TSG/1801.pdf and the results of their method.
Bonus bonus: another method for increasing intensity that I don’t remember being mentioned is interleaved practice. E.g. if you’re practicing movements associated with a physical skill, rather than repeating one move over and over and then doing the same with another move, it’s better to increase the challenge by alternating the two, or even picking randomly between the two. May generalize to cognitive skills as well. See http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/why-the-progress-in-the-practice-room-seems-to-disappear-overnight/ .
Strongest sign of this being a good event: usually I feel drained after a social event, and by the end of the official program I was feeling that, but by the time I got home I was suddenly feeling social and energetic again. Did you people slip something into my drink to make me an extrovert?
Quite alike with me. I made an effort to get to know as many as possible of you on the event and it also didn’t exhaust me. And I was surprised to be able to relate to everyone, even those I didn’t feel congenial to or would normally have avoid to approach. Everybody was open, friendly. Every contact revealed depth and topics to relate.
I really liked the extended tag system because it totally took away the awkwardness of an unclear social protocol (shake hands, just talk, hug, whatever) and instead allowed me to give and receive human warmth—which I generally felt a lot beside the generally present positive energy.
I also made extensive use of the crockers tags which were worn by most of the participants and gave lots of feedback. Personal or general feedback which in some cases pointing out things that troubled me and that could have been received negatively. But it was accepted exclusively positively. It was appreciated in surprising ways. It partly lead to intense and long discussions. And I got some valuable feedback too.
I was also surprised by the significantly higher than expected number of people with children (at least 7 if I remember correctly). I expected to have difficulty to spur interest in my parenting presentation but quite the opposite. I was asked about his multiple times and I was urged to create or add to a rationalist parenting blog. A great encouragement.
As far as the meditation goes, having having meditation that focuses on breath instead of one about thought monitoring would probably have been better as far as keeping people awake.
Thanks to everyone (and particularly the organizers) for a fantastic weekend!
Strongest sign of this being a good event: usually I feel drained after a social event, and by the end of the official program I was feeling that, but by the time I got home I was suddenly feeling social and energetic again. Did you people slip something into my drink to make me an extrovert?
(Okay, a lot of it was probably due to the book on charisma that I read just before the meetup and which gave me loads of confidence and useful techniques for getting into the right mindset for being social. But you all being so awesome made them much easier to use! So there. <3)
Some comments of what could’ve been better:
There were lots of people around, and I’d have loved having a chance to talk with everyone. However, a large part of our waking time was taken up by lecture/workshop-type content, during which there wasn’t much of an opportunity for being actively social, Saturday’s introduction start notwithstanding. I also felt mentally drained after focusing on such content for the whole day, which made it harder to be actively social afterwards: the Fermi calculation contest felt especially energy-draining, since the time limit was short and stressful enough that I basically just looked at my team’s activity from the side.
This isn’t to say that the lectures/workshops weren’t interesting! The “supercharging your learning” and mnemonics one in particular felt like they might be valuable in the future. But regardless, I think I’d have preferred a stronger focus on social activities. One of the parts about the meetup that I found the most enjoyable was the “Socratic Dialogue” that I ran into on accident, when people engaged in it had taken over my room on Friday. I was a little disappointed that the official program didn’t include anything like that.
Suggestions for improvement: favor social activities for the programmed content, at the expense of lecture/workshop-type content. Try to set up such a set of activities that everyone ends up getting introduced and everyone talks with everyone: as it was, there were some people who I simply never got a good chance to talk with. (Maybe the introductory lunch on Friday had more of this kind of thing? Too bad we Finns missed it. :( )
To the extent that there are lectures, limiting their length would be a good thing. Research apparently suggests that around 25 minutes is the maximum length for people to maintain an optimal focus on lecture-type material. A shorter duration would also force lecturers to focus on the essentials and cut peripheral content.
Suggestions for improvement: enforce a 25-minute limit on how long someone is allowed to lecture before they are required to either end their talk, or somehow engage their audience with e.g. workshop-style activities.
The meditation exercise would probably have been a better off on Saturday, since meditation while sleep-deprived does not necessarily produce good results, and Sunday morning was probably the time when everyone could be expected to be the most sleep-deprived.
Suggestions for improvement: try to schedule meditation exercises to a time when people are likely to be well-rested. (This may admittedly be an impossible task, but at least try to have them at a time when people are relatively well-rested.)
--
One last thing: subjectively at least I felt like I got my social skills to a much better level than on some previous occasions. But I was also mentally drained at times and couldn’t always keep it up, plus there were moments when I caught myself doing what felt like mistakes, like looking away from someone too fast or not saying hi when I had the chance, etc. So general feedback of how my social skills came across, by anyone who spoke or otherwise interacted with me, would be appreciated. Here’s my anonymous feedback form that you can use for this, though of course it may be difficult to stay truly anonymous: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Z2he5Tziy7OuVCGbtD2VHrI4U014sm-DRsLFw-A9dH4/viewform .
BONUS: References for some of the things that I mentioned in my comments during the “supercharging learning” workshop.
“Too rapid feedback can be harmful”:
(Susan Ambrose et al., How Learning Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching, citing Mathan & Koedinger: Fostering the Intelligent Novice: Learning From Errors With Metacognitive Tutoring.
See the cited paper for a broader discussion. Note that based on the paper, Mathan & Koedinger would probably somewhat disagree on Ambrose et al’s characterization of the worse-performing group as receiving “delayed” feedback: Mathan & Koedinger would argue that the feedback wasn’t so much immediate, but rather reflected a different conceptual model of the best kind of feedback. From their description, though, it is true that the worse-performing group did get feedback at an earlier stage than the better-performing one.)
“Shorter and easier math problems are better than longer and harder ones”: don’t have conclusive evidence since the following paper discusses a method that’s broader than just changing exercises into shorter and more numerous ones, but see regardless pages 4-5 of http://icme12.org/upload/UpFile2/TSG/1801.pdf and the results of their method.
Bonus bonus: another method for increasing intensity that I don’t remember being mentioned is interleaved practice. E.g. if you’re practicing movements associated with a physical skill, rather than repeating one move over and over and then doing the same with another move, it’s better to increase the challenge by alternating the two, or even picking randomly between the two. May generalize to cognitive skills as well. See http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/why-the-progress-in-the-practice-room-seems-to-disappear-overnight/ .
Quite alike with me. I made an effort to get to know as many as possible of you on the event and it also didn’t exhaust me. And I was surprised to be able to relate to everyone, even those I didn’t feel congenial to or would normally have avoid to approach. Everybody was open, friendly. Every contact revealed depth and topics to relate.
I really liked the extended tag system because it totally took away the awkwardness of an unclear social protocol (shake hands, just talk, hug, whatever) and instead allowed me to give and receive human warmth—which I generally felt a lot beside the generally present positive energy.
I also made extensive use of the crockers tags which were worn by most of the participants and gave lots of feedback. Personal or general feedback which in some cases pointing out things that troubled me and that could have been received negatively. But it was accepted exclusively positively. It was appreciated in surprising ways. It partly lead to intense and long discussions. And I got some valuable feedback too.
I was also surprised by the significantly higher than expected number of people with children (at least 7 if I remember correctly). I expected to have difficulty to spur interest in my parenting presentation but quite the opposite. I was asked about his multiple times and I was urged to create or add to a rationalist parenting blog. A great encouragement.
As far as social interaction with you personally goes, we haven’t interacted that much. I also don’t have a comparision to your past social skills.
I would judge your social skills as better than average of the people who attended the event.
The hug at the end felt good and was for me the best male-to-male hug of the event.
As far as the meditation goes, having having meditation that focuses on breath instead of one about thought monitoring would probably have been better as far as keeping people awake.
After the meditation session there was the question about side effects. For this you might want to look at this thread: http://lesswrong.com/lw/k13/open_thread_april_8_april_14_2014/ascq