TECHNOLOGY TRAINING - WHITHER THOU GOEST?

TECHNOLOGY TRAINING – WHITHER THOU GOEST?

By W H Inmon

Many years ago, in the early dawns of the computer profession, there was no computer. Then one day we awoke and found that the computer had invaded every company in the world. And simultaneously we discovered that using the computer – either as a programmer, designer, or an end user - was not a trivial thing to do.

As the computer began to be a part of our collective culture, we discovered that there was a lot of education that was needed to accompany the computer. Merely dumping the computer on the doorstep of the corporation achieved nothing. In order for the computer to be successful, there was a certain amount of training that was necessary.

In the early days there were very few people that were qualified to do any training. In those days technology training was a real problem.

Then one day in the corporation there appeared the computer technology training department. The computer technology training department was responsible for procuring the courses that the corporation needed. The courses came in many forms – stand up education, conferences, in house classes, lectures, and other forms. The curriculum covered a wide body of subjects.

The world was fine when there was a firm hand guiding the computer technology training curriculum in the corporation.

But fast forward to today and where is that training function? It is gone – just disappeared.

So what happened to the corporate technical training function? The corporate technical training function was killed by a thousand pin pricks –

????Training can be done over the Internet

???Vendors of technology have embedded training into their own offerings

??There are far more technologies today than there were in the early days

??Organizations have started to minimize costs for technology and training is the usual place where they start

??Organizations found that it is expensive to send people away for classes/conferences

??The depth of training exceeds what any vendor can provide

??And there probably are ten more factors that contribute to the demise of the corporate technical training function.

Now does this mean that there is no need for technical training? The answer is – not at all. Just because the corporate office has disappeared does not mean that training is not needed. If anything there is an even greater need for training today than ever before. But the corporation has ceased to be the sponsor of the training function.

It is with this background that Technics Publications has entered the fray. For years Technics Publications has had contacts with authors of data modelling, design, and architecture. It is no exaggeration to say that Technics Publications is the foremost publisher of books on data administration on the planet. So Technics Publications has turned this relationship with the many authors of books into a training exercise. Now, instead of just reading a book, you can have the best authorities in the world conduct their own courses for you. On the Internet. In the comfort and convenience of your own home.

Furthermore because of the wide number of authors that there are, the content offered by Technics Publications covers the entire waterfront. Nobody offers the breadth and depth of the training in technology like Technics.

For a free trial of this new training platform, PebbleU, visit https://technicspub.com/pebbleu/