[consulting] Drupal Training?

Thu Jul 19 13:30:53 UTC 2007

Um... my dear friend Boris, let's not lead anyone down any rosy paths by
making this sound too attractive. The market research I am conducting
indicates there is an interest in training, at organizational and individual
levels, and that it can generate a fair amount of revenue. Profit is another
matter, and I am not convinced it can be done effectively unless it is a
labor of love.

Getting together a single course is fairly expensive when you consider the
costs of getting together course materials and providing qualified
instructors. Just walking in and expecting to talk about a subject is not an
effective strategy. Additionally, tailoring courses for specific
organizations is a huge challenge, there are often very specific needs that
are better addressed through a formal consulting arrangement. Knowing where
to draw the line to provide the most value can drive you nucking futz. 

The other thing to remember is people expect depth when they go into these
courses, but not everyone is looking to talk to a core programmer. While I
am sure some general information sessions would be well received, the most
demand lies with courses where people can dig down into the details of every
subject, from fundamentals to guru level stuff.

Also, organizations are mostly interested in a 'path'. There is less value
to an organization to send people to a one-off course than to put people
into a series of courses aimed at progressively raising their skill level.
Let's remember that institutional users are less at at going out to search
for knowledge than being taught as a function of their employment, so
telling people to go into IRC and the forums is not going to cut it with
these kinds of people. The same appears to be true with individuals to a
lesser extent, people want someone to show them how to do the next thing and
not tell them to go figure it out. You need more than a course, you need a
curriculum to get the attention of enough people to justify the up front
costs (which, in itself, increases the costs just to get started).

Plus, everything has to be international. Geographically, the largest
clusters of interest lie in 1) India, 2) Russia, and 3) Germany and these
people need to be taught in a culturally relevant manner. I have floated the
idea around enough places to say this with a lot of confidence, the US and
Canada would likely be smallest in terms of headcount of people interested
in this kind of service. I am personally looking to English speaking people
as the smallest market for training services and of more value as a
bellweather for emerging trends.

Finally, the value of courses goes down the more people you train. Drupal
remains a niche technology (compared to Java and .NET) and will remain so
for a long time, there are only so many enterprises that are going to take
an interest in it. Once you have enough people at a certain level, that
knowledge is going to disseminate in various forms and people are no longer
going to be interested in taking your classes unless you reinvest heavily.
There are certainly enough subjects to keep this going perpetually, but
there is no simple formula for how to earn margins off this kind of service
and it can easily become someone's full time job just trying to figure out
when individual courses have become stale.

Without giving away the whole model, the biggest challenge is to balance the
costs of putting together something attractive to large organizations (where
more than 90% of the potential revenue lies) with the downside of those
courses becoming obsolete within a relatively short timeframe. I am working
with financers right now and Trellon is going to start publicly offering
training by the end of the month, but this is expensive to get into and
comes with zero assurances of profitability.

So, if that is what 'lots' means, then yeah, there is lots of money to be
made. There is lots of work and risk involved as well, much more than there
was in starting a consulting company. I would be happy to drill down into
the details with anyone who is interested.

Thank you,
Michael Haggerty
Managing Partner
Trellon, LLC
http://www.trellon.com
(p) 301-577-6162
(c) 240-643-6561
(f) 413-691-9114
(aim) haggerty321

> -----Original Message-----
> From: consulting-bounces at drupal.org [mailto:consulting-bounces at drupal.org]
> On Behalf Of Boris Mann
> Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2007 8:07 PM
> To: A list for Drupal consultants and Drupal service/hosting providers
> Subject: Re: [consulting] Drupal Training?
> 
> On 7/18/07, Gregory Heller <gregory at civicactions.com> wrote:
> > from my experience with DrupalCamp, i would say that a week long program
> > is probably far too long.  my the time you get to the end you'll
> > probably forget what you learned at the beginning.
> 
> We did 4 days of intensive training, with some mixed designer /
> developer attendance. Some people did all 4 days, some of those people
> now do dev full time.
> 
> See http://www.raincitystudios.com/training/drupal/november-2006
> 
> > Judging from attendance at drupalcamps, there is definitely a desire for
> > training, though most camps are free, so I am not sure what people would
> > pay.
> 
> Lots. There is room for corporate Drupal training.
> 
> --
> Boris Mann
> Office 604-682-2889
> Skype borismann
> http://www.bryght.com
> _______________________________________________
> consulting mailing list
> consulting at drupal.org
> http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting