At 10:45 AM 12/8/2000 -0500, Richard Dice wrote:
>"Randal L. Schwartz" wrote:
> >
> > But here's the reality of trainings. You need to get 10 to 20 people
> > in a room at the same time that are all starting roughly at the same
> > skill level and also want to end up in the same place. And then you
> > need to do that about 8 to 20 times with the same slide set before you
> > break even, because the cost of producing the materials is pretty
> > high: figure one to three DAYS of research for every HOUR of face time
> > in the classroom.
>
>I've been lucky enough to "inherit" (as a subcontractor) sets of Perl
>training materials put together by a really decent guy named James.
>I shudder to think of the time investment he made in creating that stuff.
>He and I have talked from time to time about revising/updating the
>existing materials, and maybe even creating some new courses, but how to
>find the time...
>
>Mod_perl is a topic I'd really like to work on -- both in terms of
>teaching and also in putting together the training materials to begin
>with. I've yet to figure out the "magic formula" to make this work,
>though.
>
> > I can't figure out where the "start" and "finish" are with mod_perl
> > that would make sense for 80 to 400 people. It's not core techology,
> > like the llama. We target the llama as how you would want ANY perl
> > hacker to spend their first 30 hours. But what 20-30 hours are
> > *common* for any mod_perl hacker? And what do you do for pre-reqs?
>
>These are all really good points.
>
>One other slightly-more-minor consideration when it comes to teaching
>a Perl course is system set-up. If you control the training environment,
>(ie. you have your own classroom and students come out to it) then this
>isn't a problem. But if you teach at the client's location, then it can
>be an issue trying to get their machines configured to the point where you
>can actually have workshops on what you teach. Mod_perl is a biggie in
>terms of the kind of setup you have to do: you need a lot of Perl modules
>installed on the machine, a recent version of Perl, source-code level
>acceses to building Apache, and not just the time needed to do this to a
>classroom full of computers, but also _permission_.
>
>That all said, I'm sure there will be mod_perl courses available somehow,
>someday. 5000(0(0?)?) mod_perl hackers can't be wrong. :-)
>
>Cheers,
>Richard
At first I read Randal's message I didn't know what to say. It's absolutely
true, but it's also very demoralizing to me (to say that it's not
profitable to teach mod_perl in the best possible way -- hands on).
It sounds to me like you have hit the nail on the head. Perhaps what is
needed in terms of recouping costs for a mod_perl hands-on development
course and/or online course is the open source/collaborative approach.
I would be willing to donate my time to write and initially test the
exercises to the slides that are taught for the days. If a couple people
were to donate their time to writing the slides based on an outline
produced by Stas and Randal.
I believe this layered approach would produce some reasonable training
material versus someone working on 1 day of training and another person
working on another day of training. If we did it that way, the days would
not have cohesion. But instead, you get 2 people doing the outline
collaboratively. You then get 2 people fleshing out the outline with some
comments from the first and then you get 1 person writing the exercises
because you want the exercises to build off of each other.
The the slides could be slowly improved in a larger open source community
after that.
I believe Randal's years of Perl training expertise would make him well
qualified to at least contribute an outline of what he believes a course in
mod_perl should entail and in what general order (kind of like a leader in
this aspect if he were willing to take it on).
Stas would also be ideal in both contributing a day of training and the
outline. Although he hasn't done hands-on training (I presume) and I have
never done so (although I've given 1-2 day lectures plenty of times), which
is a different matter.
Once the rough drafts are produced, it's a matter of having an open source
tree where the notes/exercises and slides can be adjusted as time goes on.
I would suggest HTML as the format for slides because it would be the
easiest to manage as a group project in CVS.
We could host it on sourceforge as the modperltraining project. Sourceforge
could also host the mailing list.
Then regardless of if Randal would then be willing to take the course
material and beta test it as a class he offers (eg maybe giving the course
itself would not be profitable for him), we ourselves could be giving this
course all over the world in beta-test Perl Monger groups.
I am pretty sure that if we target 6 months for this project to reach beta,
that by then I could give a mod_perl course using an eLinux training room
in Singapore for the local Asia crowd.
How about it Randal? If we make this an open source project, would this
help make it profitable for you to offer hands on mod_perl training?
I know there are still issues such as getting people of the same level of
expertise in the same room and mod_perl not being a "core" technology, but
I think mod_perl can be taught assuming similar requirements as the PROM
class you offer as an initial thought? mod_perl doesn't require all of
PROM, but probably about a day of it would be integrated to bring people up
to speed on the basics?
I know we don't have quite your experience setting up hands-on training
material, but it would be an interesting experiment if you have the time to
help us.
The schedule I am thinking of is
1 month to develop outline.
2 months to flesh out the slides with rough draft (with a break after 1
month for intermediate comments by outline and exercise authors).
And 1 month to develop exercises to go with the slides (although input on
the slides would be given by the exercise writer too). Although mod_perl
2.0 might be out by then :), I think the basic principles of the slides
would still be there.
I also think that people who are experienced here could take the slides and
use them when they start companies or departments and hire new people who
know Perl but not Mod_perl. Right now, they have to train the junior folks
off the cuff. This would give them a guideline and training material to
help bring their own guys up to speed.
Also with eventual open source written slide notes, it could also be a
self-study course.
Anyway, even if Randal does not have the time. Anyone who is interested in
helping with this project, please email me privately. If I get enough
people willing to contribute (at least 5), I'll set up the sourceforge
project to start the ball rolling Oh yeah, did I say I didn't mind donating
my admin time as well to this experiment. :)
Later,
Gunther
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