Twice is a co-incidence and three times is a pattern
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2006-02-07 05:06:25 - Graham Ellis
Open Source training from Well House Consultants started from just three customer requests for a Perl course.
I was using Perl for various web site and internal works, and training under contract - so I suppose I was a natural one to ask. By I hadn't given a clue to people that I could / would write my own material.
I'm afraid I told the first person that I hadn't seen much call for the course. "Who's going to pay for training on a piece of free software?" I think I asked.
The second person got a rather more muted "No - sorry". After all, it's said to take some ten days of course material development for a single brand new day of presentation.
I stopped myself just before saying "I keep telling people - there's no call for that ..." to the third person and the rest, they say, is history.
Public Perl courses started in 1996. From an occasional Open Source public course that year within the environment in which I was contracting, I move to presenting only my own material a couple of years later, and the Well House Consultants training centre opened its doors in 2000. Later this year, we're adding our own residential accommodation for delegates who travel far and wide for our courses, and we'll have an additional and larger room available for training too. Onwards and upwards!
And look ... all of this started from just three customer requests ...