7 Ways to Optimize Your Mindcamp Experience

by Emily Nichols

You’ve registered and paid, made your travel arrangements, and blocked off your calendar for 5 days. Coming to Mindcamp is no small commitment, but it will be over in a flash. Here are some ways to elevate your experience and optimize your precious time:

1. Be Fully Present
Make the emails stop! Let your friends, family, clients and coworkers know that your mind is going to camp, and that you’ll get back to them after August 25th. Your days at Mindcamp will be jam-packed full of personal and professional growth that will pay dividends for everybody in your life — especially if you can focus on being fully present.

2. Roam The Grounds
Mindcamp takes place at the beautiful YMCA Geneva Park Conference Centre on Lake Couchiching. Take time to roam the grounds and enjoy the breeze, the trees, the beach, or get out on the lake in a kayak.

3. Explore The App
Must-do: Download the Mindcamp app from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=events.socio.app403 or from iTunes and explore it!

• Find your way around Geneva Park with the Venue Map.
• Scroll through the People — see who’s presenting and read all about them.
• Browse the Sessions Schedule and favourite your favourites.
• Agonize over which sessions to go to. Just kidding! They’re all great.

4. Skip A Session
What? With all these talented presenters in the house? Yes. Please don’t feel like you need to attend a session in every time slot. Take a nap, roam the grounds, or sit in one of those glorious chairs looking out at the lake…whatever you like. It’s your choice!

5. Share Your Talents
There are many, many ways to share your talents at Mindcamp – and we hope you will! Here are 3:

• Become a creativity busker:
  Create an interactive experience for the Mindcamp Camino on Friday night. Mindcampers will encounter your activity or event while enjoying an evening stroll. Tell stories, jokes, give advice, teach a skill, do magic tricks. The only limit is your imagination.
• Showcase your creative project:
  Showcase your creative project, business, hobby or experiment at our “Postcard Session” (kind of like a poster session, only smaller).
• Present a Night Flight:
  We have impromptu sessions after supper called Night Flights. Post your session idea in the morning, and if there’s enough space and enough interest, your session will happen the same night.

6. Go To Kaleidoscope
Kaleidoscope groups are one of the very best parts of Mindcamp. So go! This is not the best time to nap. Kaleidoscopes are facilitated, small group discussions held every afternoon. You’ll discuss and reflect on the day’s experiences, and one of your comments could be somebody else’s major AHA! for the day. Plus, this is one of the best venues in which to do item #7…Make Connections!

7. Make Connections
Conversations at Mindcamp can go waaaay further than your standard small talk and professional conversation. If you’re prepared to be a little bit vulnerable and share your stories, you’ll gain friendships and professional collaborations that will benefit you all year long. If this sounds a little scary, maybe a little outside your comfort zone, refer to item #6…Go To Kaleidoscope!

All advice is autobiographical, and these 7 tips are no exception. Straight from the heart of a lifelong optimizer, I hope you’ll find them useful. AND, I would really love to hear what your tips are – leave me a comment!

Yours in optimization,
Emily

updated and reposted from August 2018