The mentorship and talks so far have been AMAZINGLY valuable. The 500Startups team has explicitly asked founders in the program to be vocal and outgoing about the program. So ask me anything :D
One of the attractive parts of YC is the mentorship in exactly this category[1] that comes with the program. Between that and the pay-us-for-space incubator model, it's something of an apples-to-oranges comparison to YC, anyway.
[1] Or at least how to approach getting funding, if not networking in general.
What I liked about the current process is that networking and pitching became a way to practice and learn more about that process - which will be extremely useful in later rounds.