Yea, people love to talk about having attended. It seems that the experience of the course was as meaningful to people as any improvement in public speaking. I mean... from the Scott Adams article: I remember opening my little package of compliments. Like everything else in the Dale Carnegie course, it seemed silly at first. How much impact would a bunch of mandated compliments from strangers have on me? Surely they would seem insincere to the point of humorous. I started to read them, one by one, and they blew me away. It was a powerful experience, and that was the point of the exercise. When we compared notes later, we all had the same experience. Compliments are powerful things, even from strangers who barely know you. That sounds fun. Speaking of compliments from strangers, everyone here is so darn smart.He asked us to write a brief compliment on a piece of paper for every other student. Keep in mind that we didn’t know each other. Coming up with a compliment for each of 25 strangers is no easy task. You had to dig deep. Perhaps you noticed how well someone dressed, or how much progress he made in the class, or her cheerful disposition. We each wrote our compliments and handed them in. The instructor sorted them by student and mailed them to our homes a few weeks later.
Maybe the early/celebrity iterations of the class had really top notch motivational folks. We did the same exercise and mostly you get the same generic compliments. Smart, bold, confident etc people aren't particularly creative in this regard. I can't remember any of mine