On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 6:11 AM, Andrea Aime <andrea.aime@anonymised.com> wrote:
On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 8:13 PM, Chris Holmes <cholmes@anonymised.com> wrote:
Hey guys, wanted to figure out what’s kosher for promoting an online
training we’re doing on ‘Advanced GeoServer’ -
http://geoserver.eventbrite.com/ on November 19th
Was thinking we could do something similar to our jobs postings, where we
give a day or two for anyone on the list to respond with what they’re doing.
In this case can link to specific events. And can also link to any company
that is offering training. I found http://www.geo-solutions.it/services/ -
is there a better one? Like a dedicated page similar to
http://opengeo.org/products/training/ Anyone else know of training
offerings?
Would that work for people? I think it’s the next stage of maturity for the
project, not just getting jobs using GeoServer, but multiple companies
offering training.
I fully agree that showing training options in the front page, maybe via
a new “training” page would be a very good move and a show of
strenght, and we should probably add in the same page references to
books that contain material about GeoServer.
Cool. I was more thinking periodic blog posts in the style of ‘jobs’. But how about both? I’ll make a training page, which all are welcome to contribute to. I’ll email the users list as well to see if anyone else is doing anything. And then I’ll make a blog post announcing it, and include in that any upcoming training dates.
Sound good?
About making announcements on the user mailing list training by training,
I don’t know.
How is that different from company X announcing “MyPimpedGeoServer 2.0”,
a product based on GeoServer with some extras?
I mean, training in the end it’s a commercial product too.
I see your point. But I guess I’d draw the line at training vs. products that build on GeoServer. Training is a product that without a doubt enhances the ecosystem. And the more people are trained the better for the whole community. And at some level MyPimpedGeoServer 2.0 ‘competes’ with the community GeoServer. Training in no way ‘competes’.
I suppose one rule could be that the training has to be straight GeoServer. Nothing about ‘extra’ tools that aren’t community modules / extensions. So no GeoBatch, no Analytics module (though we could adjust that to be no proprietary add-ons, if we want a different line). I’d say it could be ok to use a MyPimpedGeoServer 2.0, but the training can’t be about any features that aren’t available to general GeoServer users.
Note for this training it does meet those criteria, but likely future ones of ours will not, as we’ll want some classes that show off some of our ‘extras’. But with this rule then we wouldn’t be allowed to email the user’s list.
Thinking out loud here, how about putting an events calendar in the wiki
page talking about training, make a blog letting the world know about this
new page, but avoid advertising each single event on the user list?
I can definitely go for that. I worry a bit though at the moment that we won’t have enough ‘events’, and that the second geoserver training won’t get as much attention. Or are you suggesting that every time someone has an individual event they’d be allowed to email the user’s list about the page? Where likely only their event would show up?
I guess I feel this might be a premature optimization - we don’t actually have enough events yet. I think it could make more sense to start with letting people email the list, and then if it gets overloaded with training ‘announcements’ (advertisements) then we’d shift to that.
I’m ready to be convinced otherwise, I just find it hard to draw a line between
a training program and a product based on GeoServer.
Sure, I want to find that line, which is why I wanted to start this discussion. So I’m totally flexible too, just want to figure out what level works.
With obvious bias I actually do think it makes sense to be liberal now and be more conservative if we get overwhelmed with training announcements. For us this is still an experiment, trying to figure out if there is any sort of market for advanced training. Right now we’ve had 2 registrations, and we need more to justify even giving the class. If we are successful in this attempt then other companies will know that they can possibly offer similar things. But it may be we just don’t have the market yet. But giving any company willing to try the best chance of success seems to me a good course of action, and then tailor it back once it does become annoying. But I think that having too much training may be one of those ‘good problems to have’. Not being able to find enough options to learn the technology is one of the primary criticisms of open source, and I’d love to have a robust market around GeoServer to be able to say we have more training options than our proprietary competitors.
Again, just playing devil’s advocate here, I definitely see the other side too, so I’m happy for any consensus we reach.
C
Cheers
Andrea
–
Ing. Andrea Aime
@geowolf
Technical Lead
GeoSolutions S.A.S.
Via Poggio alle Viti 1187
55054 Massarosa (LU)
Italy
phone: +39 0584 962313
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