thinking about going to the Roadmap.

[kermalou]

well, took the seminar yesterday.

for a newbie, paying out of my pocket, it was different. mostly everybody there was there because their company paid their way.

it was very very imformative and I learn a lot better by seeing and doing something, I learned alot. some of the terminlogy used was new, but nothing bad. it might be alittle too much for a newbie.

now to use everything that was taught.

 

[TesTeq]

What's your opinion?

Was the seminar inspirational / motivational?

Is David Allen a guru of the GTD cult or a professional presenter of the GTD productivity methodology?

 

[Brent]

Congrats, kermalou! Thanks for the report.

 

[kermalou]

you know he just puts it all out there.

very concise and to the point.

i am really thinking about getting that notetaker wallet of his.

 

[mochant]

The Roadmap has, in fact, evolved

I have attended the Roadmap seminar in London last year. I found the seminar to be of average value and would not recommend it to anyone, esp. if you are new the GTD methodology. There may be some value to a GTD veteran but a newbie would be completely lost. Most of the time in the seminar was taken by practitioners of GTD who still had kinks to work out - after these discussions there was hardly anytime for David to talk about basic GTD (it is a one day seminar, remember).

-snip-

If the seminar has evolved since London then that is a different story...

I just attended the Santa Monica seminar on Friday. I saw none of what you describe happening a year ago. I think David must have gotten a lot of feedback to that effect because he set expectations early that he would not allow that sort of derailment to happen and he didn't. At every juncture where questions were entertained, he time-boxed nicely and then got back to the agenda.

I first attended the two-day seminar back in 2002. This new one day format is a nicely compacted version of what he used to do in two days. Of course, something had to go to allow a 50% reduction in time. From my perspective, having been to both and having listened to GTD Fast countless times, what David has done is focus the agenda on the "why" questions and trimmed most of the "how" content out. In fact, he did not even show the classic workflow diagram onscreen, nor is it in the course manual. He made a single passing reference to it being in the book (attendees get a paperback copy along with some other swag) and that was it.

I was very impressed with how much David has embraced mind maps. He referenced the technique a number of times and had a number of slides that were generated from MindManager in the deck he was using.

TesTeq - to answer your question, I think he is a professional presenter, teacher, and coach. He neither asked for nor seems particularly comfortable with the guru mantle. In fact, I made a note to myself that he did an excellent job of objectifying the content and distancing himself from it. He called himself a "fellow student" a number of times during the day which is completely consistent with comments he has made in the past about the true nature of attaining black belt mastery. It's not a simple matter of always executing at a perfect level. It's more about knowing when you've fallen out of shape, recognizing that fact, and understanding the discipline well enough to quickly get yourself back into shape and operating "in the zone".

FWIW, I sat with three newbies who all agreed the seminar was very engaging, motivational, and helped them understand the potential costs and rewards of adopting GTD.

 

[gtderik]

What about for GTD veterans with some kinks in the system?

Mochant,
I signed up for the Roadmap in Minneapolis coming in a month. I feel like the seminar might help me in seeing and perhaps doing some of the techniques in the book. I did get a little nervous when you said that the HOW portion was cut out of the seminar. I was hoping that seeing the process "fleshed out" would give me key insights to my own system. Do you think that I will be disappointed?

 

[mochant]

I hope not

Mochant,
I signed up for the Roadmap in Minneapolis coming in a month. I feel like the seminar might help me in seeing and perhaps doing some of the techniques in the book. I did get a little nervous when you said that the HOW portion was cut out of the seminar. I was hoping that seeing the process "fleshed out" would give me key insights to my own system. Do you think that I will be disappointed?

I hope not and no, I don't think so. I sat with three newbies who had not yet really begun implementing GTD seriously and they all walked away very satisfied that they had a much better handle on how to ramp up properly.

Sorry if I gave the wrong impression - I was in the zone of comparing the old two-day event to the Roadmap and that's where that comment came from. For example, in the two-day, we spent a good 20-30 minutes conducting a mind sweep (brain dump, whatever you prefer to call it) and did a bit of Q&A between ourselves and some of the coaches who were in attendance. But that seminar had less than half as many people in attendance and I can appreciate how unwieldy that sort of process could be with 150 people.

David is very careful about pointing out exactly where in the text you can find reference for each of the procedural, "how" pieces of the process and also reiterates a few times the value you can find in the free articles and tips on this site.

Combine that with the incredible body of knowledge this community offers right here in the forums and I think you'll do just fine. The Roadmap has me totally juiced up and rethinking the idiosyncrasies I've introduced into my process over the years. Not that I'm throwing them out wholesale, mind you. Many of the adaptations I've put into place work really well for me and I plan to hold onto them - the way I use MindManager to manage my projects for example.

It's a day well spent if you are looking for a clear, high-level presentation about why this method works for so many people in so many different circumstances.

 

[kermalou]

read the book and re-read te book then go to the Roadmap.

 

[sonia_simone]

mochant, at some point I'd love it if you posted what you ended up throwing out or rethinking after having attended the seminar.

 

[mochant]

OK - here's a quick list

mochant, at some point I'd love it if you posted what you ended up throwing out or rethinking after having attended the seminar.

Sonia:

It's not much what I threw out (very little except for some dead-end reference stuff I had been sitting on for too long) as what I have added or put back in. The RoadMap made me very aware of the fact that I had been getting very horizontal at the expense of spending enough time at the higher altitudes. I sat down a did a fresh mind map for each altitude and it made me realize that a lot of the things I had been storing at 30K or 40K have become realities, to one degree or another, in the past year.

Moving some of those longer term, bigger picture items down to the 20K - runway levels had the effect of forcing me to redefine what my vision was for the 3-5 years and what wild success looks like to me today.

I also cleaned a ton of cruft from my Someday/Maybe list and parked some of the stuff that's just not moving right now there to tidy up my Project maps and NA list.

Oh... and I'm going to set up a tickler file again. I abandoned that quite some time back but I think I have a good perspective on what was missing from my implementation in the past (short story - I was being way too literal in my approach to what I would put in there).

This is just what I had hoped for when I made plans to go to the seminar. A serious jump start to reinvigorate my approach and a healthy shaking up to clear the cobwebs out.

I am planning an extended weekly review this week (3 hours rather than my usual 1-1/2) to finish up this process and really get my system humming.

 

[sonia_simone]

Very cool, thanks for the expansion.