This year there’s quite a few new things in the Port80 galaxy, a new website (ok, not launched yet), a newsletter (ditto), a podcast (double ditto) and I may as well add something else into the mix; training & workshops.
I’ve been running workshops for a few years myself; mainly giving training on stuff like Twitter, WordPress, Campaign Monitor and things like that; so it feels a natural fit to roll this out to Port80.
The first workshops will probably be on the day before Port80 but, and this is a key point, workshops and training will also be run independently of the main conference. I don’t know how often yet but it might be, for example, once a quarter we’ll run two days of workshops.
What subjects?
Anything and everything. From CSS to content strategy to PHP, Ruby, Javascript, WordPress, handling clients. You name it. Actually, I mean that. You name it! What would you find useful?
Workshops will be offered to seasoned pros and absolute beginners alike; the long term aim is something for everybody.
The format will probably be half day and whole day workshops of a limited class size.
Who will be giving them?
I will be delivering every single workshop on every topic. Folks who know what they’re talking about, in those particular areas, will be the trainers. I’m already talking to a few candidates and I will be reaching out to more shortly. If you have a topic you feel qualified to teach on, then please shout out.
These will obviously be paid for affairs.
Not Enough Training
In my career I’ve had to learn a lot on the hoof; I think it goes with the territory and there’s a lot to be said to learning that way. However, there are other forms of learning. Conferences show us we, in the digital development community, like to group together and be human once in a while. Workshops & traditional teaching environments offer us human learning element as well.
My aim is for a steady stream of really useful, practical, affordable training sessions delivered by experts. I want to put the kind of training in place which I would have liked to have had for myself. I want there to be a menu of bite sized chunks of learning which people can walk away with and use immediately.
What next?
The venues for the first workshops have been booked and these will take place on the 9th of May. The actual workshops taking place will be announced in Feb.
In the meantime, if you have any feedback, ideas, requests etc then please shout out.
Joel
Joel: For those who don’t know (and please excuse my cack handed explanation here), agile is an approach to running projects which is less about trying to know and specify everything up front – where along the way discovery is expected if not encouraged. I’m particularly interested in hearing James speak incase I can pick up any nuggets which can help me with running Jojet’s projects.
Yours truly will be talking about the pros and cons of website hosting, the different types of hosting, handling clients etc. It’s actually not as dull as it sounds. The aim of the talk is to go through my experiences of hosting clients websites and also to see what can be learnt from the audience.
There will be a brief intro to 
