Bootcamp

Michele McCarthy & Jim McCarthy

I'm working a Bootcamp with McCarthy Technologies this week. "Working" means team-teaching, coaching, leading. It also means growing exponentially. Participating in one of these laboratories is a peak experience, a huge growth accelerator.

Bootcamp is an intentionally recursive bootstrapping experience. Bootstrapping is what a tree does. The seed bootstraps itself from a seed to a sprig, a sapling, a tree, a flowering tree, a fruiting tree. How do you go from seed to tree? In a human, one algorithm begins, "Teach yourself everything you need to know to..."

Jim McCarthy and Michele McCarthy have spent the last ten years working on, "How do you teach people to fish?" Or, more accurately, "How do you most efficiently teach people to teach themselves how to fish?" The Bootcamp has gradually evolved and honed. You're given a shining book, a set of protocols, several levels of support, a deliverable, and a structured experience. The results are incredible, indelible.

"Once you know this, you never go back," says Jim. "You may choose not to use it -- but you never forget it's possible."

Bootcamp is an evanescence of humans. It is one of the only times I have experienced, other than theatre, where everyone in the room is functioning on all levels at once.