There is a thriving market for independent books and training courses about Lotus Notes and Domino. Last year, I reviewed one such offering from Wellesley Information Services, the Notes/Domino Security, An Administrator's Guide.
This month I look at a somewhat different product from WIS – its three-day training course titled Domino Administrators Bootcamp. This course was previously offered as a live seminar in various cities around the world. Now, it has been repackaged as a self-training product for $995.
The training package consists of four video CDs that allow you to watch the training sessions, a printed copy of the class handouts, and a fifth CD with a fair amount of additional material. That CD contains an electronic copy of the handouts; articles from The View magazine that relate to administration topics; and databases, tools, custom views, and product demos used in the course. The class is taught by Rob Axelrod and Andy Pedisich, both well-known Lotus experts.
The course modules, each with its own video section, are:
While the overall list of topics is enticing, creating a good course outline is fairly easy. Delivering quality material is harder. This training set does deliver quality. Rob and Andy present expert-level lectures on basic and advanced Domino topics. The sessions include a great deal of information that would take years to learn through trial-and-error.
The way that the sessions are presented visually on the CDs is also first-rate. The lecturer is shown as a talking head in a small window on the upper-left. Below the lecturer is a rolling outline of the broad session topics. The majority of the screen, to the right, is taken up with the de
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tailed slide for the current topic.
To watch the training, you do not have to do anything at all. Once a module is started, you can put your feet up, sip some coffee, and maybe take notes about items of particular interest. Of course, you can also jump around among topics and watch the modules out of order.
Should you consider purchasing this self-paced training, instead of attending one of the competing live classes? Self-paced training has several advantages:
On the other hand, live training has some distinct advantages:
My opinion is that this training set is worth its price, if it is hard for you to leave the office for several days, or if your training budget is tight. But viewing these videos will require some discipline to sit still and watch, even if you break the experience into one or two hour chunks. Keep in mind, also, that the $995 price is per-person. If three people in your organization want to view the course, you should purchase three copies.
For more information about this training package, see Domino Administrators Bootcamp from Wellesley Information Services.
Live training courses related to Notes/Domino are offered by Netlan, CorpInfo, and others. Here is IBM's list of training classes, most of which are offered by outside vendors.
About the author: Chuck Connell is president of CHC-3 Consulting, which helps organizations with all aspects of Domino and Notes.
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