I finished up a technical training course today. The intention of the training was to ensure that the people who attended it would be able to successfully deploy the VoIP service and maintain it. This effort is in turn reduced to educating them about that platform and the technology it’s built on. That end is then effected by me traveling to stand at the front of a room near them, project text onto a screen at the front of the room, and talk. In addition to talking, the people who attended it also had a workbook with some exercises, and at certain points they were to do the work prescribed.

I don’t think I know much about what I’m doing. I don’t have any mechanism to monitor the effectiveness of what I did with respect to the ultimate goal — i.e., these people solving problems, deploying the system, etc. I don’t have a good feedback mechanism on that part.

I did get some nice comments from the attenders. But that could have been just politeness. I’ll bet I could have done a lot worse, and still gotten some nice comments.

Here’s what I know about training: