After weeks of preparation, our first training offering in St. Louis is complete and I can finally relax a little bit. At Engage, we have offered on-site training for quite sometime; however, it is such a different and exciting experience for all of us for holding training classes in St. Louis.

I'd like to thank everyone who joined us in St. Louis the first week of April. It was such a great opportunity to meet new people, to network and to share stories and experiences in working with DotNetNuke.

The students brought with them a mix of experience in DotNetNuke ranging from novice to experienced. Each brought with them an interesting perspective toward DNN. Some came to evaluate the framework for their corporate system migration; others had worked with DotNetNuke for years and were excited to take it to the next level. All in all, it was the students who created an inviting environment to learn and have fun.

I had a good time working and showing them the framework as well as socializing after class. The input from the students and their feedback after class was really encouraging to keep improving our offerings and gave me great ideas for future topics and classes.

The training went well and overall was a success. There are a few things that I learned after the first week of training that I wanted to reflect on. First, we need to offer a much broader program to fit the various expeience levels of our students. We had numerous preparatory classes prior to training in which we developed a strong curriculum, but I don’t think we could have ever anticipated the numerous opportunities available for training until we actually went through our first week. As a result, we took a second look at our course offerings and will be introducing some new material starting in May 2008.

Having worked with DotNetNuke skinning and UI design on numerous projects at Engage, I'm personally responsible for the skinning training. Although people I trained had positive feedback across the board, I felt that we didn't have enough time to cover all the topics in-depth in just two days. So we came up with a new course to help build a stronger foundation – Skinning Essentials. I realized to truly do justice to what is possible in DNN Skinning we need to make sure the core concepts are covered in detail.

I’m excited about this new class because it will serve as a great launching point for everyone interested in skinning and DotNetNuke. For a novice, it will help them make informed decisions when purchasing a commercial skin or troubleshooting an existing skin on their site. For someone ready to start developing their own skin packages, this class will equip them with all of the tools available to start digging into the HTML.

The first week of training in April went by fast and we all were happy with the results. We look forward to seeing you at the second week of training (May 12-16). As we always working and listening to our customers to improve the programs, you are welcome to contribute any feedback to us or just plain to visit St. Louis for a Cardinal game or the Anheuser-Busch brewery, it will be a great experience for all.

I look forward to seeing you all in my next training courses.