The document discusses technical training as a business niche, outlining the speaker's experience providing in-person programming courses to companies and some best practices for effective technical training, including preparing well in advance, doing many exercises during sessions, and providing perspectives from real-world experience to supplement information covered.

1. Is technical training
the right niche for you?
Reuven M. Lerner • Freelance Remote Conf
February, 2016
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2. Who am I?
• Programmer, consultant, developer
• Long-time Python (+Ruby/Git/PostgreSQL) user
• Linux Journal columnist
• PhD in Learning Sciences from Northwestern
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3. My stuff
• Newsletter: http://lerner.co.il/newsletter
• Blog: http://blog.lerner.co.il/
• Daily Tech Video: http://dailytechvideo.com/
• Or @DailyTechVideo on Twitter
• Mandarin Weekly: http://MandarinWeekly.com
• Or @MandarinWeekly on Twitter
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4. But lately…
• About 80% of my time has been spent as a
technical trainer
• In other words: I go to companies, and teach their
programmers how to use the technologies that I
know and love
• Mostly Python, PostgreSQL, Git; also Ruby, data
science, and regexps
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5. I’m so happy!
• No more arguments about schedules, product scope, or
cost overruns
• I’m helping companies to be better at what they do
• I’m helping people to be better at their jobs
• Companies come to me, asking for courses
• I’m booked solid through March, and 50% through
September 2016. Wow!
• And the pay is pretty good, too!
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6. Today’s agenda
• What is technical training?
• How does the training business work?
• How can Learning Sciences help me train better?
• Q&A
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7. What is technical training?
• Hi-tech moves very fast
• Everyone must always learn new technologies
• Most people cannot learn new things themselves
— they lack time, discipline, experience
• Thus, companies bring in trainers to bring their
employees up to speed
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8. Training is outsourced
• Companies have in-house trainers
• But that’s generally for basic things, or in-house
technologies
• A huge amount of training is done by external
contractors
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9. What do I mean by
“training”?
• Live lessons and lectures (in person or virtual)
• Not pre-recorded videos
• Not shared slide decks
• Not books
• All of these are good, but I have focused to date on
in-person training
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10. Trainers are catalysts
• The aim is to speed up the learning of material
• Analogies
• Perspective
• Pitfalls
• Experience
• Mental models
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11. Training is big business
• In 2013, training in the US alone was $141 billion
• By all accounts, this number is rising rapidly,
perhaps by even 10% each year
• Technology companies typically spend more than
others
• Not all of this was for frontal lectures, but a lot of it
was
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12. Training companies
• Many companies specialize in training
• You can work for them!
• The good news: They take care of marketing, sales,
negotiations, and payments.
• The bad news: They take a very large chunk of the
income, often 50 - 80% of the income from a course
• They often have non-compete clauses, so mixing your
own training with theirs can be problematic
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13. Doing it yourself
• If you’re a consultant, then you’re probably used to
dealing with companies
• But training is a bit different
• You’re pitching a product (not a service)
• You’re pitching to non-technical people
• The budgets work differently
• The feedback (and future opportunities) are different
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14. Can I do this?!?
• Many people are unsure if they can train
• No, it’s not for everyone
• You need technical chops + ability to teach
• (Most people have one or the other)
• You can certainly improve
• Also: How many others know the technology as well as you
and can teach and are available to teach during the day?
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15. Content knowledge
• You need to know what you’re talking about
• This doesn’t mean that you need to know
everything — indeed, I often learn great things from
my students!
• But you should be familiar and fluent enough that if
someone asks a question, you’ll be able to be at
their level, rather than sound like an ignoramus
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16. Pedagogical
content knowledge
• More important than content knowledge is
pedagogical content knowledge
• The ability to explain the content — which is at
least as important as knowing the content itself!
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17. Training manager
• Most companies have a training manager
• Some even have a training department
• This person is the coordinator of training
• This person is your primary contact — for pitching,
coordinating, budgeting, and future work.
• In many ways, the training manager is your client.
Make their life easy, and satisfy them, and you’ll get
lots of work.
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18. Technical people
• The training manager usually doesn’t have a
technical background
• They won’t approve syllabi, or give you feedback on
the content of your course
• Rather, they coordinate needs, and provide feedback
• The training manager will often ask one or more
technical people to approve syllabi and/or ask you
questions
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19. Training budgets
• Companies typically budget for training
• Your job, in some ways, is to convince them that
their budget should be used on your course
• The money is almost always there; the question is
whether it’ll be spent on you or someone else.
• Thus: Make sure that your syllabi match the
company’s expectations. Make sure that you are
offering a course that will benefit the company
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20. Pricing
• Yeah, but how does pricing really work?
• There are several models:
• Per day: A global rate, no matter how big or
small the class is.
• Per participant: A daily rate for each participant
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21. How many participants?
• I typically say 16, but I’ve had classes with 20-25
• (Depends on payment and culture.)
• Always tell them what the maximum number is!
• Some people will likely drop out, depending on
their company policies
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22. Assistants?
• TAs?
• I don’t use them, but I know some people who do
• This depends on your style, the size of your class,
whether they’re available
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23. Authorized vendors
• Most large companies will require you to be an
“authorized vendor” in order to sell to them.
• This process can take a while, and might require
that you agree to certain payment terms (e.g., net +
60)
• That said, it’s a fairly standard and painless
process — and once you’re in the system, you can
expect to get paid on time
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24. Internal marketplaces
• In some big companies, any authorized vendor
may propose any course, for any price.
• People can sign up if they want the course,
perhaps with their manager’s approval.
• Whether the course happens depends on how
many people register, which is a function of the
topic and price.
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25. Special-order courses
• Sometimes, a group in a company will want a
course just for them
• Everyone has the same needs, background
• They want a custom syllabus
• Automatic internal approval, without waiting for a
class to fill up
• This can be great!
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26. Proposals
• Syllabus: What do you want to teach?
• The more focused the class, the better
• I’ve gotten increasingly focused, and that helps to
attract the right people
• Proposal: Money, schedule, and your expectations
• Projector, whiteboard, lunch, Internet connection
• Travel and hotel also, if you’re traveling
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27. Getting to big companies
• It’s hard!
• So start with small startups
• Cold calling them might work
• Survey them while building the course; make them your
partners for their needs
• Get noticed by the tech community — speak at
conferences and meet-ups
• Blog often, so people can confirm you’re an expert
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28. Advanced courses
• These have often been problematic for me
• People without experience will often sign up for an
advanced class
• “Advanced” isn’t an intelligence test, but rather a
measure of how well they know the basic material!
• This can cause real problems and friction
• Find out what a company can/will do to filter out
inappropriate participants
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29. Open-enrollment courses
• Instead of going to a company, you open it to
anyone interested
• You can charge (much) more for these, but it’s
much more work intensive
• Marketing, location, registration, etc.
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30. Online classes
• I’m going to start offering online, real-time classes
this year
• This is a new experiment for me, but I want to try it
out — and it’ll allow me to reach many new people
• This increases potential audience, while reducing
the need for me to find a venue, lunch, and so forth
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31. Successful training
• So, you’ve got the gig.
• What do you do before, during, and after the
training to ensure success?
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32. Easy for you?
That means nothing!
• Sometimes, I feel like I shouldn’t discuss a topic,
because it’s so obvious and easy.
• I mean, really — do we need to discuss variable
scoping in Python? It’s so obvious!
• I’ve found that no one in my courses knows
anything about such seemingly simple topics
• Include them, and review them — people will really
appreciate your exposing the inner workings
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33. Before
• E-mail your slides (in PDF) to all participants
• Maybe I’m dumb for doing this, but my slides aren’t all
over the Web, and I still have work!
• Configuration, installation requirements
• Language, libraries, or (if you want) a VM to download
• Don’t send this the morning of the course
• Maybe: A questionnaire, 1-2 weeks before the course
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34. Also before
• Practice, practice, practice
• How long will things take? When will you do each
exercise?
• Can you live-code the exercise solution while talking,
keeping it fluid?
• If not, then don’t do this and/or practice lots more
• I often use Webinars and/or meet ups to practice new
material
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35. Questionnaires
• Especially with advanced courses, I’m often
suspicious that people aren’t that advanced
• (Having been burned on this many, many times)
• Thus, I will sometimes send participants a
questionnaire, asking (on a scale of 1-5) how well
they know a bunch of topics I want to cover
• People are often far less advanced than they claim,
until you pin them down on specific subjects
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36. Review, improve slides
• Always be looking for ways to expand, improve
your slides
• Better examples, explanations
• Rephrasing of things
• Reordering of topics
• Spending more time on certain topics
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37. Start the day
• Go around the room, finding out about people
• Ask their names
• Why are they here?
• What is their background?
• What do they want to get out of the course?
• Use this information when teaching, to help draw
connections with what they already know
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38. Each day
(other than the 1st)
• Start the day by asking if anything wasn’t clear the
previous day
• About 50% of the time, someone will ask something
• This is almost certainly useful to everyone, not just
the person who asked
• It also points to subjects that could use extra
explanation
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39. Exercises
• Do lots of them. The more, the better
• They will learn more, they will like the class more,
and you don’t have to lecture as much!
• Must only rely on what you’ve covered so far
• Force choices
• Force integration of knowledge
• Force corner cases that sharpen mental models
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40. Same exercise,
different solution
• I’ve recently started doing something new: I give
the same exercise multiple times, asking them to
use a different solution technique each time
• This has been surprisingly successful
• With beginners, this is way better than, “Decide
which data structure to use on your own”
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41. Exercise types
• Challenges
• Learn by doing a task, using information presented so far in print or in person
• Often, re-implementing something they know is a good exercise
• Walk-throughs
• Copy the instructor and/or a manual, to become more familiar with
something.
• Projects
• Day-long sessions, in which you specify a project and (partly) walk them
through everything from planning to coding
• Much more open-ended, appropriate for intermediate/advanced learners
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42. Pair programming
• I encourage people in my classes to work in pairs
• It’s very clear to me that those who pair achieve
more, and learn better
• Pairing forces metacognition
• It’s a shame that almost no one in my classes
actually does this
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43. Give perspective
• The most important thing for technical training:
Don’t give information that they can read on their
own!
• Provide insights, stories, and perspectives that
demonstrate your experience
• Show lots of “aha” moments
• These are some of the most effective parts of my
courses
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44. Live coding
• I love love love to do live coding
• I find that it helps things to flow, and to provide
demos
• (It helps to touch type)
• Also, this helps to show not just how the final
answer should look, but how the process of coding
should look in your favorite technology
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45. Stories
• I love stories!
• They can really help to drive a point home
• Plus, they make things more entertaining
• Collect stories — especially funny stories — and tell them
• Dump the ones that go flat, keep the ones that do well,
and then keep improving them
• You’re sort of like a stand-up comic or one-person play
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46. Slides
• I make lots of slides, but use them less and less.
• (More live coding and demonstrations)
• I now have about 100 slide decks, each on a different
topic, numbered in the rough order I want to use them
• A course is thus a combination of slide decks
• If I research/add a new topic, it becomes a new deck
• I can expand each deck, as I learn more about topics I
want to cover
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47. Questions
• Questions are the best! Encourage them often.
• Take them very seriously. Face the person. Thank
them for their question.
• Many times, questions have led me to deeper
(better) material and exercises
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48. Things to bring
• VGA and HDMI video adapters (especially Mac
users)
• Power adapter — this is crucial!
• Working copy of the language you’ll use
• A copy of your slides, in PDF, somewhere you can
get to them (e.g., your server or a USB drive)
• Optional: Snacks!
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49. Schedule and breaks
• I generally give two 15-minute breaks (morning and
afternoon)
• I usually take one hour for lunch
• Make lunch as late as possible without torturing
your participants!
• People are less attentive after lunch
• Sometimes they need more than one PM break
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50. After
• Each day: Send them a zip file of everything you’ve done that
day
• Slides in PDF (including updates)
• Exercise solutions
• Live-coding examples
• After the entire course:
• Tell them about your (free) mailing list
• Connect to them on LinkedIn
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51. After-session questions
• Some people will come up to you afterward, to ask
questions
• Answer them! These people are motivated
• They usually ask good questions (which can be
used in future exercises and courses)
• They’ll appreciate the attention and give you high
ratings, so there’s some self-interest here
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52. Surveys
• Take these very seriously. This is your grade.
• Ask people to fill them out. The higher the n, the less
likely outliers will determine your grade.
• If you do well, then you’ll be invited back for more
courses.
• If not, you will either get a warning or not be invited
back
• Besides the survey, ask for feedback from them!
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53. Keep on learning
• Keep up your technical skills
• Read blogs
• Newsletters
• Trends
• Look for questions on Stack Overflow, Reddit
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54. New courses
• Upselling: Good for you, and your customers
• More products (courses) to sell
• Learn more things, making yourself more valuable
• Additional slide decks you can mix and match
• Teach the same people multiple times, multiple
courses — you’ll get groupies and advocates
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55. Ideas for new courses
• Many participants have similar needs, which you can’t service in a generic
course. So create a specific follow-on course!
• Python for system administrators
• Python for data science
• You don’t cover something as much as you’d like
• Regular expressions
• Some people feel left out
• Python for non-programmers
• Advanced python workshop
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56. Thanks!
Any questions?
• You can always find me at:
• reuven@lerner.co.il
• http://www.lerner.co.il/
• http://blog.lerner.co.il/
• http://lerner.co.il/newsletter
• @reuvenmlerner on Twitter
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