Great Training Classes - SANS Institute

I've done a lot of training in my life, and had a great class last week.

It *might* not seem great at first glance - well over 2000 (yes, thousand) pages of material to cover, 6 days from 9AM-5PM, Mon - Sat, and even an evening "bootcamp session" each night. In many ways a real bear to teach, but it was great.

Why? What makes a great class?

Great Materials: The student materials were absolutely superb. Each slide had notes -- in some cases 5 plus pages of carefully researched and written notes. The material was very up to date, having been entirely recently reworked. Great materials matter.

Great Attendees: No one volunteers for a class that includes nights and Saturdays unless they really want to take it, and it never seems that anyone is forced to take this class. I had a pretty challenging group as always, and they were happy to be there and learning the materials -- although in some cases, individual students knew more about some topics than I do. This is to be expected!

Immediately Applicable Knowledge: There was (hopefully in almost all cases) information the participants could use immediately! Anyone ever have a training class where the knowledge gained might be useful in maybe a few months? -- if you're lucky. Unfortunately, these are often a waste of resources.

The class? The SANS Institute's Security Essentials. I'm back in their rotation teaching classes again and enjoying it immensely. I was too busy for a while. Oh yes, it's work, but enjoyable. I learn a lot from the students as well . . .

My next open enrollment one is in Toronto June 25-30, and I've got an onsite in lovely Dayton Ohio before that (that's a joke! Dayton is OK, but as many readers know, "lovely" is NOT the correct word).