[consulting] Drupal Training?

[Gerhard Killesreiter]

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Michael Haggerty schrieb:
> 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.

Can you indicate how you did your research?

> 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).

Neat summary.

> 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.

Interesting that Germans should be that interested in Drupal training. I
didn't receive any requests for such training from Germany yet.

> 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.

You are missing some crucial part about "Drupal world domination". ;)

Cheers,
	Gerhard
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