Yep. Aero is the technological equivalent of Jessica Simpson. Damn nice to look at; hell, nice to do a lot more with I am sure. But long-term relationship material? Hell No!

Erin and I have been discussing putting on workshops or seminars here in Las Vegas, based on material from our web sites.  I’d like to share with you some possibilities and invite your feedback, either via the forums (public), my contact form (private to Steve), or Erin’s contact form (private to Erin).

Why workshops?

While we can share many ideas via our blogs, forums, and podcasts, there’s just no substitute for face-to-face contact.  A live workshop is so much more immersive and expressive.  It also gives attendees the opportunity to interact with each other in a way that can’t be done online.

This is especially true for Erin.  In her one-on-one readings, she can only speak to so many clients per week.  Due to increasing demand, she’s had to raise her prices 5-6 times over the past year.  Currently a 20-30 minute phone reading with her is $195, and she continues to receive new referrals and repeat clients.  At that price there are a lot of people who’d very much like a reading but who simply can’t afford one now.  There’s not much we can do about that though, since the pricing is based on simple supply and demand.  For a long time, Erin was booked so far in advance that people had to wait many weeks to get an appointment, and her schedule became rather inflexible.  She’s finally getting caught up, so new clients can book their readings much sooner.  Of course she continues to share freely via her blog and forum posts, but she’d really like a way to connect with more people in person.  Consequently, hosting a workshop holds a lot of appeal to her.

Location?

We’d surely begin with our hometown of Las Vegas.  The city itself is enough of an attraction that people don’t need much of an excuse to visit.  Meeting rooms on the Strip can be a bit pricey, but it’s a great location for anyone coming to town (a few minutes from the airport), and it’s centrally located for anyone who lives here.  The closest hotel to us is the Red Rock Casino, which is about 15 minutes from the Strip.  It’s one of the newest hotels and has a very nice conference center, but I’m not sure going off-Strip is a good idea.

Duration?

I think the workshop should span at least 2-3 days if people are coming from out of town, so they get enough value to make it worth their while.  I’m thinking 3 days would be ideal, perhaps spanning a weekend (Fri-Sun).

How soon?

I’d want to offer at least a few months advance notice, so people would have time to make travel plans.

Speak together or separately?

Since Erin and I cover different topics, it’s not clear whether we should do something together as a couple or host our workshops separately.  Erin gets frequent requests for a workshop on psychic development, but that subject probably wouldn’t appeal to the majority of StevePavlina.com’s visitors.  Similarly, I could speak on topics that might not interest ErinPavlina.com’s core visitors.  Most likely we’ll contribute to each other’s workshops, but we’ll primarily present them individually.  We might also offer back-to-back workshops, so people can choose to attend either one or both on the same trip.

Choice of topics?

It takes considerable effort to put a good workshop together, so choosing the right topic is important.  I’m inclined to do one on “Personal Development for Smart People,” addressing the major topics from this site, including productivity, self-discipline, finding your purpose, problem solving, habits, emotions, relationships, and financial abundance.  It would take a top-down approach to the theme of conscious living and apply it to all parts of your life, first explaining the high-level ideas and then going through practical exercises to apply them in everyday situations.  I find this idea more attractive than doing a very narrow workshop on a topic like self-discipline — I don’t like explaining individual tools without establishing the overall context in which they can be used (i.e. using self-discipline as a tool to enhance your service to others).

Erin’s most requested topic is psychic development.  She easily has enough material to fill a multi-day workshop on developing intuition, meditation, tuning in to spiritual guidance, lucid dreaming, astral projection, and more.

I think these are two very different kinds of workshops, each appealing to different types of people (although with some overlap), so I don’t think it would make sense to blend them together.

However, Erin and I can both contribute to each other’s workshops.  For example, Erin can share ideas for enhancing your intuition to make better decisions and thereby boost productivity.  And I can share my experiences of being totally freaked out every time I visit the astral realms. 

Erin and I would greatly appreciate your feedback on this.  Here are some of our biggest questions:

1. If we host a workshop or seminar in Las Vegas, under what conditions, if any, would you choose to attend?
2. On a scale of 1-5, how appealing is this idea to you (1 = I’d never go, 5 = I wouldn’t miss it for the world)?
3. What personal development topics are of greatest interest to you?  What would you want to learn?
4. In what area(s) of life are you struggling the most (finances, relationships, health, career, etc)?
5. If you could make only one specific improvement in your life by attending such a workshop, what would it be?
6. What is your preferred learning style?  Do you prefer highly interactive, experiential workshops with lots of activities?  Or do you prefer more lecture and/or PowerPoint presentation, packing in as much raw content as possible?  Or do you enjoying mixing it up?
7. How significant a role does pricing play in your decision?  Does $300 for a 3-day workshop seem reasonable to you?  (That price is near the low-end of typical pricing for a 3-day personal development workshop.)
8. Do you prefer big seminars with hundreds of attendees or a more intimate setting with a few dozen at most?

Please let us know what you think.

P.S. The forum discussion of this post includes a simple poll, so you can vote on question #2 above.

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© 2007 by Steve Pavlina. If you find these ideas helpful, please leave a donation for Steve so you can enjoy the spirit of giving too.

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“Whether it’s infighting among creators, bad marketing, new technologies, or just plain being crummy, there are almost as many reasons why coding languages didn’t become popular as there are programming languages.” The article examines ALGOL 68, Befunge, REBOL, ColdFusion, brainf*ck, Java2k, INTERCAL, VRML, SMIL, Haskell, Delphi and PowerBuilder.

The article “Iraq Comes Home” includes several first-hand accounts from US soldiers that returned from Iraq.  It offers a perspective that our mainstream media usually filters out.  I encourage you to read it, but be sure to have some tissue nearby.

The article begins with some 2004 statistics (no idea if they’re still current):

According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2004, 86 percent of soldiers in Iraq reported knowing someone who was seriously injured or killed there. Some 77 percent reported shooting at the enemy; 75 percent reported seeing women or children in imminent peril and being unable to help. Fifty-one percent reported handling or uncovering human remains; 28 percent were responsible for the death of a noncombatant. One in five Iraq veterans return home seriously impaired by post-traumatic stress disorder.

Most of the article consists of personal stories from soldiers who’ve returned from Iraq.  Here are a few excerpts.

Michael Goss:

I have PTSD. I know when I got it — the night I killed an 8-year-old girl. Her family was trying to cross a checkpoint. We’d just shot three guys who’d tried to run a checkpoint. And during that mess, they were just trying to get through to get away from it all. And we ended up shooting all them, too. It was a family of six. The only one that survived was a 13-month-old and her mother. And the worst part about it all was that where I shot my bullets, when I went to see what I’d shot at, there was an 8-year-old girl there. I tried my best to bring her back to life, but there was no use. But that’s what triggered my depression.

Sue Randolph:

The military says that they’re giving exit counseling and reintegration. What they’re calling reentry counseling, in my experience, was, “Don’t drink and drive. Pay your bills on time. Don’t beat your spouse. Don’t kick your dog.” All of these things that once you’ve reached a certain age, you’re supposed to know. None of it is, “If you have discomfort with dealing with crowds, if you don’t feel comfortable with your spouse, if you can’t sleep in a bed, if you don’t want to drive down the road because you think everything is a bomb, here’s what to do.” No psychological or de-stress counseling is involved in this reintegration to garrison. And that’s just if you’re staying in the Army. If you’re leaving the Army, you get, “Here’s how to write a resume.”

If you want to argue that there’s a propaganda element to virtually anything written about the war these days, I won’t disagree with you.

The article closes with some challenging questions:

We have no comprehension of the psychological cost of this war. I know kids in Iraq who killed themselves. I know kids that got killed. OK, that’s apparently the price of doing business. But multiply me by 2 million. If I’m fairly high-functioning, what about the ones that aren’t? They’re going back to small-town America, and their families aren’t going to know what to do with them. It’s like, what do we do with Johnny now?

Whether the war ends sooner or later, most of these soldiers will eventually return home.  And how will they be treated when that happens?

I think it’s a mistake for them to be treated as heroes or villains.  Such polarities imply conscious decision-making, but their stories frequently reveal a descent away from conscious thought.  In war one’s thoughts become reactive instead of proactive.  “Do as you’re told” replaces “think for yourself.”  Survive replaces live.

Once you train someone to react unconsciously — to kill or be killed – how then do you restore that person to a higher state of consciousness?  On a large scale, these people will be reintegrated through osmosis.  The typical level of American consciousness won’t be of much help to them; it’s what they’re already being offered, and they reject it as useless.

The only practical way to help such people is to strive to be a more conscious person yourself, such that you positively influence everyone around you.  For every soldier whose daily reality has become, “Better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6,” we need others whose daily reality is rooted in forgiveness, acceptance, and gratitude.

Whatever the daily reality of the U.S. soldiers, however, there will be far greater challenges in store for the Iraqis.  This is obvious, but it’s also something we cannot ignore.  Whenever I see a bumper sticker that says, “Support our troops,” I substitute the thought, “Support our consciousness.”  No one on this planet is undeserving of support.

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© 2007 by Steve Pavlina. If you find these ideas helpful, please leave a donation for Steve so you can enjoy the spirit of giving too.