AS in many polls, the offered answers do not quite fit my situation.
I am fortunate enough to live within an hour of Chase Rosade, who refuses the title of "Master", but who is generally acknowledged to be one.
Each year, I participate in about 20 "open workshops" with him. In these we bring our trees and work on them, with his advising on styling and showing techniques as needed. How do we classify this? He also, from time to time, will have a visiting expert conduct a seminar. A particularly memorable one was on grafting, conducted by Taiwanese Master Chiu-Chang Chiang. (Had anyone told me three years earlier that I would spend an afternoon paying undivided attention in a class given in Chinese, I would have not believed them!)
I have done workshops with a number of visiting masters at other venues, and, while I find these entertaining, I have slowly come to the conclusion, that, by the time I find and buy a tree to work on, do not justify the total cost. Fortunately, another local nursery sells some of the resulting trees for me, as, otherwise, my collection would get totally out of hand.
The demos at conventions are entertaining, but, IMO, less valuable than hands on time with the same Masters. In most cases, I come away with one or two key "wrinkles" that are very useful. What I learned fron Dan Barton about the use of torches in conjunction with carving is an excellent specific example. In other cases, such as the many offered alternatives to raffia, they are more interesting than needed.
Online groups, such as bonsai Talk, have been of tremendous use to me. I think this usefulness is greatly enhanced by having a sensei (Chase) available to discuss ideas that are offered. I find my sense of geographical differences is tremendously sharpened by all the "contact" with people from all over the world. I must also note, that the use of the net has greatly increased my skepticism of offered ideas.
However, one soon learns which posters are worth paying attention to, and which (how to say this?) may need a little more experience. I have learned to stay out of "religious" issues (soils, etc), and that the value of a thread tends to decrease in the later posts.
There are tremendous resources available on the web: BT's
Wiki , The
BCI Species Guide , The excellent articles and other info from Brent Walston at the
Evergreen Gardenworks site, and any number of sites dealing with diseases and plagues are just examples.
Will I ever be a master? I doubt it, but I get a little better every year, thanks to all of these resources.
