I've never been a huge fan of the corporate training week. In my experience going to them as a employee, it's kinda a paid vacation, yet a boring. It's great to learn all at once and whatnot, but having someone read a manual to you in front of a computer seems like a horrible way to spend your day when you're visiting a fun big city.

So now that we're going full Open Source, it's obvious we need to pull revenue from other, more regular, sources and training courses is certainly one of them. While I hate the certification things I've had to do in the past, I do LOVE planning fun events so here's how we're going to roll:

You come to sunny Portland, Oregon we'll show you how to think like a Concrete programmer.

• Arrive Wednesday for Thursday 9am start at the studio, we suggest you stay at one or two of the more fun Boutique hotels, but here's where our office is if you want to choose you're own. We are very well served by the Max line if you stay further out.
• Thursday:
• 9am-9:45am Snacks and Sharing
• 9:45am-11:00am Concrete 101 Approach & Architecture
• 11:00am-12:00pm Challenge definition
• 12:00pm-1:00pm Lunch
• 1:15pm 1:45pm Making Blocks
• 1:45pm 2:30pm Integrating Applications
• 2:30pm 3:15pm Presentation Techniques
• 3:15pm 6:00pm Q&A Work Session
• 6:00pm 8:00pm Dinner
• Friday
• 9:00am-9:30am Snacks & Sharing
• 9:45am-12:00pm Q&A Work Session
• 12:00pm 1:00pm Lunch
• 1:15pm 2:30pm Some Class TBD
• 2:45pm 4:00pm Q&A Work Session
• 4:00pm 6:00pm Presentations & Dinner

I dunno, something along those lines. I like the idea of letting people actually do something unique and giving them dynamic feedback on it. I remember going to a Sequent certification class on Dad's corporate dime growing up, and it being such a bore throughout the day that I ended up writing a shell based chat script that I could use to drop in with any of the people in the class while sitting there listening to the teacher read verbatim from the fucking manual. Of course the teacher never bothered to wonder what all my clicking was about and the only way I even got my shell script out of there was to literally print it and re-key it later. (hey no easy Internet access in those days)

Come to Oregon and we'll do more than just read you a story, we'll indoctrenate you into the Concrete CMS culture, we'll invite you to our Alums email list, we'll adopt you into our way of thinking, and we'll leave you with the option of spending a fun weekend in Portland.