A Good Reference
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Most people I know that are lucky enough to receive some training dollars from their company wind up at one of two places. The PASS conference, or a similar one, if they are a SQL Server professional. Or they end up taking some of the Microsoft classes at a local ATEC center for the SQL Server, Windows, or development exams.
However are those really good sources of knowledge? I'd argue that the conferences can be better if you really go to them with the intention of learning. You meet a variety of professionals, get to network and talk with others about what they are doing, and in the case of the PASS Summit, you often get people presenting solutions that they've developed in their own environment, usually a company like yours.
In an ATEC, my experience has been the people teaching often aren't "experts" in the subject. Rather they're professional instructors that go through the material and then present it back to you. There's some value in that because a really smart expert that can't speak to a class or effectively deliver material might be worse than someone that doesn't understand the material but can deliver a speech. Witness many of the staffers manning booths at conferences. Often they know enough to inform you and deliver a pitch, but they aren't the ones to ask the technical questions. If you're paying $2000 or more a week for a class, then you really want to be sure you gain some knowledge you can use in your job and I'm not sure the Microsoft official courses really give you that.
So are either of these worth it? I think the conferences are great, but a lot of companies and managers think you'll treat it like a vacation and not learn much. Some of that happens, but it seems that most of you I've encountered at TechEd or the PASS Summits are there to learn something.
The three of us (Andy, Brian, and myself) have talked about the problems of finding good training. After all, how often have you known an instructor or had any idea of their skills? If you're like us, then it's pretty rare. Most of the time you're really throwing the dice across the felt and hoping you don't get a 7.
In trying to grow our business, we've looked at the options and decided that training is a good choice for us. We're hoping that if you really want to get some knowledge, that you'll want to come see us. After all, the three of us have written hundreds of articles and answered thousands of questions on this site. You know who we are, have an idea of how we think, and hopefully will trust that we can put together a class you'll find extremely useful and a fantastic value.
We're hoping to start classes in August in Orlando, FL. The home of Disney, close to beaches, and year round wonderful weather. Keep an eye out for the schedule and save some training money for the latter half of the year.
We're also building some classes and we have our own ideas of what people need to know, but let us know if there's something you'd like to see us teach. One of the three of us will be personally delivering training and we won't ever cancel a class because of poor attendence.
Who knows, maybe you'll end up with one-on-one SQLServerCentral.com training!
Steve Jones
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My experience of training has been varied.
The best one was when the official trainer had called in sick and a emergency contractor had to be called in. He taught us everything on the syllabus and taught us how it was done in the real world.
In general I find the benefit of going on a course or seminar is in mixing with other DBAs and gaining a fresh perspective or approach to the same old problems.
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Steve ,
Not that this would sway your opinion one way or another but ... I'd come in a New York minute to one of your classes. WHere do we sign up? I alread live at the beach ... maybe you could have it at my house
Del
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I would certainly attend a class given by one of you, although I much prefer Colorado (at any time of the year) to Florida.
I could even kill 2 birds with one stone. My wife is an equestrian trainer/instructror and I'm what some would call a "professional amateur". Summer Circuit in Colorado (High Prairie) is coming up soon. Classes for SQL and classes over fences seems like a good combo to me!MG
"There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies."
Tony Hoare"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." Red Adair.
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The classes would be awesome! From what I have seen, most managers only want to send DBAs to a SQL Server class/conference though. In reality, developers probably need it more but that's the way I have seen it go.
As far as management's interpretation of the value of conference goes, the company I work for requires a report on what we learn at conferences upon return. Typically I write a brief overview of all the topics that I attended sessions for; I send this to management and peers and offer to add details on topics by request. The requests usually end up being lunch or hallway conversations but my managers have been satisfied that I have no only learned something but spread the knowledge to the others that I work with. If your management thinks your request to attend a conference is a glorified vacation then you might consider giving something back to the company in exchange for the trip (assuming it's not a vacation
)[font="Tahoma"]Bryant E. Byrd, BSSE MCDBA MCAD[/font]
Business Intelligence Administrator
MSBI Administration Blog -
My experiences have varied with training as well. Mostly development, so I understand it's difficult to tie down what everyone needs. Many times, especially MS, it is read from the book, dry, not worth a lot. Others, off on tangents, where the instructor become overly interested in one students concerns. Depends on what the student is trying to achieve, pass MSDBA or learn something they may actually use.
I don't get much of a chance to travel and train, so it ends up something close to home. Distance learning has worked, but the interfaces are poor. Best I have experienced is trial and error. I have never learned anything going through the examples in class, even when they fail, the instructor learns what might go awry.
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It is difficult to find worthwhile training on SQL Server advanced topics like clustering, replication and log shipping. Also, it's difficult to find worthwhile trainnig on performance tuning.
Ann L. Barron
SQL Server Database Administrator
Washington Mutual Bank, FA
ann.barron@wamu.net
(904) 281-3471 -
My one (& only) experience with classes was so abysmal that I'd sworn off ever taking one again...but that was before the new training centre in FL!
Is the possibility of holding online classes/training even a gleam in your eye at this point ?!?! Think of all the people who live outside the U.S who will never be able to benefit from your combined expertise and wisdom!!
**ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI !!!** -
As both student and instructor, I can say that my experience has that it takes two (or more) for any course to come out well. I have on occasion learned more from watching/listening to a 90-minute Wickert/Wyatt presentation recorded @ PASS than I have at a full-time alleged "boot camp." However, I have been in ATEC courses where I learned far more from an engaging instructor in three days than I could have in a week-long seminar like TechReady.
One of the biggest problems that I have seen with "professional" training shops is that they do NOT invest in lab hardware nearly enough. Instead of providing desktop PCs for each student, they should sink all of the money into a decent pair or four cluster-ready servers and a SAN so that folks who might not otherwise have a chance to put their paws on such gear can gain some "real experience" instead of just doing the stand-alone labs that they could do in Virtual PC at home. It's not unreasonable to require students to bring their own notebook PCs to class (since 90% already do anyway) for the basic work. This is futher enabled by evaluation versions of Virtual PC and a fully virtualized classroom environment (which sure makes classroom setup much, much easier!)...
Another huge problem is that the instructors are so squeezed by management that they don't have enough time to 'master' their material before class. The pressure is there from management, but I still lay the blame at the feet of the instructor who has the professional obligation to the students. This is especially true for instructors who have written their own courseware!!! Students can tell when an MCT-equivalent is reading the slides and when s/he knows the material well enough to drain a slide without ever looking at the screen while walking around the classroom. (Yes, I know it makes students nervous, but I find that they pay attention better when I pace the classroom unpredictably.)
As an instructor, I have an obligation to respond to the students needs, but many instructors don't or can't. I've been in courses alleged to be "boot camps" @ a facility that shall remain nameless which were nothing more than expensive introductory courses. There were four of us (consultants) in one such class of ~20 students that wanted the "boot camp" to get off in the weeds where the real challenges (and consulting dollars) lie instead of following the "click here, type that, click OK" script that the instructor was following -- but he wouldn't take the bait and we wasted a week of our lives sitting through another introductory course.
A type of training that I have seen at a previous employer (that had the right idea but the wrong execution by less qualified curriculum developers) was self-paced DVDs that were based on Virtual PC images, LiveMeeting-type presentations, online labs (on real servers) and supported by instructors using email and IM. I'd love to moonlight with a vendor to produce this kind of professional quality DVD courseware to deliver quality, in-depth curricula!! I think the challenges would be branding, market perception and cost, but if any 3rd party has what it takes to overcome those obstacles, it's SQLServerCentral! (Let me know when the royalties start rolling in and I'll tell you where to PayPal them to me. Heh.)
I think it goes without saying that an ATEC-equivalent should *not* provide connectivity to the outside world during class time. But even though avoiding the distraction seems obvious to me, many big name ATEC-type shops provide wireless internet connectivity for students to pay attention to instead of the coursework. Which brings me to my next point...
Students have an obligation to themselves, to each other, to their employers (or Mommy & Daddy if they're the ones paying for it) and to the instructor to put in not only 100% effort but also 100% attention. Students who don't have the requisite knowledge should NOT take a more advanced class just because they don't want to be honest with themselves about being a beginner... Students who have an employer who don't respect the training time enough to keep them undistracted should get a new employer (or at least turn off the cell phone and don't answer email during class time). I have watched students (usually staff developers) pay rapt attention throughout a course until they learned the thing(s) that they knew they needed specifically to do their job or solve their current work-related problem and then tune out for the remainder of the week... I think this kind of student lack of engagement points out the fact that courses are not expensive enough for people to properly value them and for ATEC-type shops to provide enough prep time and quality hardware to the instructors.
I'll conclude this rant by saying that the reason why people seem to learn more at an MTC [Microsoft Technology Center] session or a well-structured consulting engagement than in a "training class" is because they bring their own data and business problems with them and we help them deal with issues that they're already familiar with... and because they expect to leave with a working solution that "the boss" is waiting for. If the alleged lab work in most ATEC-type courses wasn't so goofy and contrived, perhaps students would engage with it more. This goofiness factor is exacerbated when the lab materials don't build on top of each other because somebody thinks that they should stand alone to prevent students from being hampered by getting earlier labs wrong.
These training deficits are fixable. Somebody has got to do it soon!
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I have to agree with most of what David said - he pretty much nailed it! As an instructor myself (in a VERY different subject matter), I find the best classes for both myself and my students are those in which the students are fully engaged in the material, and the instructors are fully engaged in both the material and the student's perspective. Our curriculum has changed over the 15+ years I've been teaching, and so has the "teaching style". We've gone from "spoon feeding" to interactive learning, where the students are more in control of the learning order (the instructor is really facilitating the learning process). This scenario requires the instructor to truly be an expert, since you may be asked questions that are not specifically covered in the provided material!
I'd like to also address the perception of many companies that conferences like PASS are more of a "vacation" than a learning opportunity. I'd say it depends on the quality of employee you are sending. Either you trust the professionalism of your employees, or you don't. Requiring some kind of write-up or presentation on their return seems perfectly reasonable - after all, don't you send them so they can bring the knowledge back and share it with their co-workers? Of course, maybe if these seminars and conferences weren't held in the vacation capitols of the world, it would lessen that vacationer image. Look at your own editorial - "beaches", "Disney World" - is it any wonder upper management might look askance at training in such an area? If you can't hold a training session in the middle of nowhere and get people to come, it might indicate that indeed there is some vacation mentality going on...
Here there be dragons...,Steph Brown
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Thanks for the comments and great suggestions. It's good to hear the feedback and we hope to provide high quality learning to people, not the MCSE/Boot Camp/test prep training, but real practical training.
On the location, we choose Orlando primarily because Andy lives there, but also because of all the tourism, flights and hotel are cheap there. Pretty much anywhere in the country can fly to Orlando for $300. Also, it's a great place to bring the family. Take 3 days of classes, stay the weekend and enjoy the area.
Good points though about selling it to management. We'll keep that in mind.
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I am really interested in becoming a trainer, so I check out the want ads from time to time. I recently saw an ad titled "SQL Server Trainer" from one of the most popular tech training companies in the area. The description wanted someone who also train MSCE cert, PC support and Exchange. That's when I realized that they are not looking for experts, just people who can read slides!
Aunt Kathi Data Platform MVP
Author of Expert T-SQL Window Functions
Simple-Talk Editor -
I really like the idea of SQLServerCentral providing classes, I thing the real world experience you guys have would make all the difference to the students. I also like the idea of online classes or DVD's, there is one website, http://www.appdev.com/, which I especially like in this area. However, for a beginner like me the price is a bit steep.
I am currently in college so not much chance of my being able to attend a class for some time, however you would definately be my first choice if the option was ever presented to me.
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What a great idea! I can't wait to see your course offerings. I only hope that I can persuade my boss to send me to a class in Orlando, Fl when he already knows what a HUGE Disney fan I am.
Have a good day,Norene Malaney
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I have taken the microsoft classes at New Horizons & attended the PASS conference last year. I would say the more indepth training was at the PASS conference. The in classroom training was a good introduction but not much practical info like everyone has mentioned already.
We have been looking for a good training course on performance tuning SQL server. Not much out there on only this. Some classes might touch on it for a chapter but nothing that is dedicated or goes deep on it. If you could offer something on this, I am sure that a lot of people would be interested.
John
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