It's one thing to provide a training course ... and another to provide an effective training course that the delegate will fondly remember, and the course administrator will book as his first choice for the next student for the same subject. Yesterday evening, I wrote something of our philosophy for a proposal that we're submitting and I'm going to share it here to give you a flavour.

Looking for yesterday's Santa trip - see here in the archive ... this blog moves FAST ;-)

3. The Well House Consultants Philosophy

We aim to provide you with a superior product - we want you to be so happy with what we deliver that you'll automatically think of us first next time!

How do we achieve that? Here are some of the factors.

3.1 We write all our own material. And we update it regularly too - you'll find that courses have small changes made quite often to mention new techniques and software releases, for example. This also means that we are not constrained to any agenda required by an authorisation centre, but rather we can be flexible to your needs.

3.2 All courses are presented by our own staff who are the experts who wrote them. This means that we can answer all on-topic questions as the course proceeds (and many off-topic ones too!) meaning that your delegates leave with everything covered. Where a question is to be "come back to later" we make a note of it so that we really DO cover it later.

3.3 We offer a "no cancellation guarantee". Once you have booked a course and it's confirmed, we will not cancel it - very occasionally, that means that a public course ends up being a private one, but we know that our customers schedule their training in amongst a whole complex mesh of other tasks and really cannot afford to re-arrange at short notice.

3.4 Public courses are limited to a maximum of just 8 delegates to ensure that each delegate gets plenty of the tutor's time and attention during class and practicals - we won't leave your staff behind, nor run so slowly that we waste their time.

3.5 After the course, delegates will find all the examples in the notes on our web site, which they can download if they wish. Our tutor also offers follow us support via a forum or email, at no extra charge within reason.

3.6 We only teach subjects that we enjoy. Quite apart from us being a little selfish in this regard, it means that your delegates will be motivated during the course; where the subject being taught is appropriate, the tutor writes new examples in front of the delegates to illustrate not only a solution, but more importantly how that solution is reached. And with the tutor enjoying the subject, you'll often find him in the classroom from early to late if the delegates wish to ask extended questions.

3.7 Our training centre is also a high quality business hotel. That was, the delegates on our public courses spend time with others learning the same subjects from different organisations - widening the scope for all concerned. And if you take over our hotel for a private course, you'll see excellent team building benefits too.

3.8 Our training room was fitted to our own specification with our own courses in mind. Everything from a quiet environment to large desks, whiteboards that cover the whole wall and lighting for optimum use of projectors has been taken in to account. Good visibility from all seats, tea coffee, soft drinks and water available at all times, etc, help make an easy environment in which to learn.

According to my records, we have trained almost 30 delegates from [organisation name] in the past 2 years, and I would confidently suggest that you ask any of them for confirmation of the above.

Found this page in my blog through a search? Who are we? .... Here's some of the introduction text from the same proposal!

1. Introduction

Well House Consultants write and present technical and programming training courses in a range of niche subjects - mostly "Open Source". Most of the subjects we teach run as regular public courses at of Melksham, Wiltshire training centre. That's about 100 miles to the West of London, 160 miles south of Leeds, and 15 miles east of Bath. We also run private courses for groups of delegates from individual client organisations, and those courses can be run at or near your office, or at our training centre.

Since our subjects are highly specialised ones, many delegates travel a considerable distance to attend and we so our training centre features hotel standard rooms - indeed, it is open as a hotel for visitors to local businesses when we've got rooms that are not required by delegates.

Our training web site is at
• http://www.wellho.net
and our hotel site is at
• http://www.wellhousemanor.co.uk

2. Subjects Taught

Our current offerings include public courses in Perl, PHP, Python, MySQL, httpd / Tomcat web servers, Tcl, Ruby, Java, C, C++, and Linux. For many of these subjects we offer a range of courses, to suit different levels of delegate and different levels of competence to be achieved.

We can offer ALL of those subjects on private courses too - run in house at your offices, or at our training centre / hotel as appropriate. The following subjects are also available (the list is not exhaustive - please ask): HTML, web page and web site basics. CSS. Shell programming. Introduction to Object Oriented principles and database design. Private courses can be (and usually ARE) tailored to suit the group of delegates to be trained, and we routinely write a small amount of extra material if our customers require an extra course element which is not on our regular catalogue. There is no extra charge for this tailoring.
(written 2007-12-02, updated 2007-12-05)

 G502 - Well House Consultants - Business Practice
  [15] 90 to 10 or 80 to 20 rule - (2004-08-15)
  [27] Sales technique - (2004-08-25)
  [68] Get the strategy worked out and the tactics just fall into place. - (2004-09-30)
  [77] Telephone systems - (2004-10-07)
  [88] Getting the right level of trainer - (2004-10-14)
  [95] Five red flags - (2004-10-21)
  [108] A typical morning - (2004-11-03)
  [121] Fair and Simple - (2004-11-17)
  [125] Staff theft - (2004-11-21)
  [129] Trawling our site to prevent student copying - (2004-11-24)
  [137] Certification schemes - (2004-12-02)
  [157] Automatic service upgrades - (2004-12-19)
  [180] Skunk works - (2005-01-17)
  [188] Pink elephant and appreciation - (2005-01-24)
  [200] Tips for the top - (2005-02-03)
  [211] Look after your staff and they'll look after you. AOL. - (2005-02-12)
  [217] Use of time - (2005-02-16)
  [226] Growing our systems - (2005-02-24)
  [297] A reminder that the customer is King - (2005-05-01)
  [321] Sales - the alternative close - (2005-05-23)
  [399] simplicity hides real size - (2005-07-31)
  [438] Fair system for travel and accommodation expenses - (2005-09-07)
  [457] Do the work and take the risk - a PHP contract to avoid - (2005-10-06)
  [467] Tell them three times - (2005-10-17)
  [487] On line course booking - credit card protection - (2005-11-06)
  [491] Being atypical is typical - (2005-11-10)
  [536] Cancellations and penalties - (2005-12-21)
  [626] Not just a pretty face to answer the phone. - (2006-02-26)
  [652] Morning Post - (2006-03-20)
  [664] Ruby course - oops - it's not happening - (2006-04-01)
  [766] Discounts and approved supplier lists - (2006-06-17)
  [808] Sales call - (2006-07-19)
  [849] Staff Meeting - (2006-08-30)
  [869] UNABLE TO ATTEND - (2006-09-16)
  [883] Age discrimination law - (2006-10-01)
  [906] A commitment we won't be making - (2006-10-27)
  [1057] Selling by phone and Skype - our policy - (2007-01-30)
  [1084] Writing terms and conditions for conferences and other events - (2007-02-17)
  [1133] B-2-B Networking, 20th April. Useful for YOUR business? - (2007-04-03)
  [1157] Speed Networking - a great evening and how we arranged it - (2007-04-21)
  [1165] Extended Credit request - train in June and be paid in September - (2007-04-27)
  [1243] Heavy duty hole punch - (2007-06-24)
  [1260] An inspirational business talk from one of our prospective MPs - (2007-07-06)
  [1263] 0800 043 8225 - a new phone number for Well House - (2007-07-10)
  [1319] Customer feedback - lifeblood of a business - (2007-08-25)
  [1342] Google, wwmdirectory, Freshwater, ATP - new scam? - (2007-09-09)
  [1373] New Month, New Quarter, New Laws - (2007-10-01)
  [1394] Business to Business Networking - North and West Wilts / Melksham - (2007-10-17)
  [1485] Copyright and theft of images, bandwidth and members. - (2007-12-26)
  [1626] Early May - a short chance to regroup and improve - (2008-05-01)
  [1713] Ways to accept credit cards - or not! - (2008-07-19)
  [1855] Volunteer v Employee - a skewed balance? (FSB) - (2008-10-25)
  [1913] Alastair Darling helps make paperwork and confusion - (2008-11-30)
  [2044] Please Trouble me - (2009-02-16)
  [2122] Commission Creep - (2009-04-08)
  [2126] Weeding out old phone numbers - (2009-04-11)
  [2161] Get it right ... if it goes wrong, it takes so much effort to sort out! - (2009-05-08)
  [2187] Are we IITT (Institute of IT Training) members? - (2009-05-17)
  [2190] How you are (re)presented at an exhibition - (2009-05-19)
  [2283] Everyone is in the customer relations business - (2009-07-12)
  [2331] Certification Revisted - Lua - (2009-08-09)
  [2465] Melksham Town - asleep or awake? - (2009-10-21)
  [2598] An excuse for making a sales call - (2010-01-26)
  [2788] Cost of Sales - (2010-06-01)
  [2821] Chancellor George Osborne inspires Perl Program - (2010-06-22)
  [2936] The service that customers should receive - (2010-08-27)
  [2966] Cheap Country Hotel in Melksham, Wiltshire? - (2010-09-21)
  [3073] Customer Service - the boundary - (2010-11-27)
  [3157] A new monopoly on the ferry to Northern Ireland - (2011-02-04)
  [3333] Honesty and a friendly welcome goes a long way - (2011-06-25)
  [3506] Cold call contacts - preference services and turning off spam sales approaches - (2011-11-03)
  [3613] Keeping Business Local. But is that realistic? - (2012-02-13)
  [3665] Will will smile? - (2012-03-22)
  [3750] Matching opening hours to when customers can come in and buy - (2012-06-04)
  [3755] Cruising on the Mersey Ferry? - (2012-06-07)
  [4107] Snog, Marry, Avoid - (2013-05-31)
  [4293] Certification - (2014-09-15)
  [4415] Buffet review - taking the price into account - (2015-02-05)
  [4520] No cold sales calls please - but delighted to hear from others! - (2015-09-29)

G310 - Well House Consultants - A better class of course
  [215] Open Source becomes mainstream - (2005-02-14)
  [219] Some unusual features - (2005-02-18)
  [224] YOUR application and YOUR data - (2005-02-22)
  [230] Course sizes - beware of marketing statistics - (2005-02-27)
  [292] Elegant languages - Perl, PHP, Python - (2005-04-26)
  [350] Want to be one better - (2005-06-17)
  [371] The training team that's looking out for you - (2005-07-07)
  [394] A year on - should we offer certified PHP courses - (2005-07-28)
  [497] I have a river to cross - (2005-11-16)
  [554] What backup is adequate? - (2006-01-04)
  [559] ''I don't know'' is sometimes a good answer - (2006-01-09)
  [577] Learning to program in Perl or PHP - (2006-01-26)
  [579] Short Linux and Perl courses for small groups - (2006-01-27)
  [646] PHP - London course, Melksham Course, Evening course - (2006-03-14)
  [726] In praise of training course delegates. - (2006-05-20)
  [1035] Longer hours and better value courses - (2007-01-15)
  [1488] New trainee laptop fleet for our Open Source courses - (2007-12-30)
  [1576] Making PHP and MySQL training relevant to the course delegates - (2008-03-15)
  [1645] Seeing how others do it - PHP training - (2008-05-17)
  [1933] Learning to Program in C - (2008-12-10)
  [2010] How long should a training module be? - (2009-01-27)
  [2049] Why Choose Well House Consultants for your course? - (2009-02-20)
  [2074] Weekday or Weekend PHP, Python and Perl classes? - (2009-03-10)
  [2084] Books and distance learning from Well House Consultants? - (2009-03-15)
  [2109] Why most training fails ... - (2009-03-30)
  [2633] Why do I teach niche skills rather than mainstream? - (2010-02-13)
  [2762] Well House - Mission and Policy summaries - (2010-05-13)
  [3001] How will we present courses over the coming years? - (2010-10-17)
  [3271] The importance of feedback - (2011-04-30)
  [3385] Do university courses teach the right things for life at work later on? - (2011-08-10)
  [3419] Data that we use during our training courses, and other training resources - (2011-09-04)
  [3587] C++ Courses - do I get official certification at the end of my Well House course? - (2012-01-20)
  [4280] Making use of huge data, object orientation, unit testing and frameworks - (2014-06-07)
  [4558] Well House Consultants - Python courses / what's special. - (2015-10-28)
  [4583] Back in the saddle again - excellent open source course from Well House Consultants - (2015-11-26)

G200 - Well House Consultants - Course and Company information
  [13] Mobile Office revamp - (2004-08-13)
  [181] Maximum number of trainees on a course - (2005-01-18)
  [234] How to get the best from your supplier - (2005-03-03)
  [277] Fire drill - (2005-04-12)
  [419] Most popular courses - (2005-08-19)
  [504] We are about Open Source programming courses in the UK - (2005-11-24)
  [549] 2005 - Come as a student, leave as a friend - (2005-12-31)
  [550] 2006 - Making business a pleasure - (2006-01-01)
  [564] Open Source training from Well House Consultants - (2006-01-14)
  [1018] Open Source Courses and Business Hotel - products and prices for 2007 - (2007-01-01)
  [1087] Telling a story in different ways - (2007-02-20)
  [1102] A Reference - (2007-03-08)
  [1317] 2008 course schedule - Perl, Python, PHP, Linux, Java Deployment, Ruby and more - (2007-08-23)
  [1384] An email update for past guests and delegates - (2007-10-08)
  [1492] Well House Consultants Training and Hotel - 2008 news - (2008-01-01)
  [1565] Languages compared - based on developer community size - (2008-03-05)
  [1577] Spring and early summer training courses - (2008-03-15)
  [1623] PHP Techniques - a workshop - (2008-04-26)
  [1629] A short introduction to our courses - (2008-05-03)
  [2041] httpd, Tomcat and PHP course enhancements - (2009-02-14)
  [2118] Spring Sprung - (2009-04-05)
  [2222] A (biased?) comparison of PHP courses in the UK - (2009-06-07)
  [2227] Learning PHP, Ruby, Lua and Python - upcoming courses - (2009-06-11)
  [2278] First courses for 2010 - (2009-07-10)
  [2326] Learn a new programming language this summer. - (2009-08-06)
  [2332] Formation, des langages Open Source - (2009-08-09)
  [2333] Formaci[83][c2]ón, de los lenguajes de c[83][c2]ódigo abierto - (2009-08-09)
  [2334] Formazione, Open Source computer lingue - (2009-08-09)
  [2335] Ausbildung, die Open-Source-Sprachen - (2009-08-09)
  [2336] Forma[83][c2]ç[83][c2]ão, Open Source computador l[83][c2]ínguas - (2009-08-09)
  [2337] Opleiding, Open Source computertalen - (2009-08-09)
  [2338] Uddannelse, Open Source computer sprog - (2009-08-09)
  [2339] Oppl[83][c2]æring, Open Source datamaskinen spr[83][c2]åk - (2009-08-09)
  [2340] ldning, Open Source dator spr[83][c2]åk - (2009-08-09)
  [2341] Koulutus, Open Source tietokone kielill[83][c2]ä - (2009-08-09)
  [2350] Ten years in Melksham - looking forward to ten more. - (2009-08-11)
  [2354] Training, Open Source computer languages - (2009-08-13)
  [2400] Are you wanting to learn PHP? - (2009-09-08)
  [2505] I almost put the bins out this morning - (2009-11-16)
  [2558] Happy new decade - and course and hotel prices for 2010 - (2010-01-01)
  [2560] Training comparison to QA Training, Learning Tree, GB Direct. - (2010-01-02)
  [2637] Courses - Melksham and elsewhere - until the end of April - (2010-02-16)
  [2659] New numbers, as 01225 707126 and 01225 709638 are being retired - (2010-03-04)
  [2661] Current Public Courses - (2010-03-05)
  [2777] Blowing our own trumpet - (2010-05-23)
  [2838] Respecting our customers anonimity - (2010-06-29)
  [2925] Well House - the pictures - (2010-08-16)
  [2935] 01225 707126 to 01225 344596 to 01225 899360 - Well House Fax - (2010-08-26)
  [3112] Public and private courses - subjects available for 2011 - (2010-12-29)
  [3115] Perl, Python, PHP, Lua, Linux, and more - and business hotel too. Menu for 2011 - (2010-12-31)
  [3202] Telling you something about us in just one line - (2011-03-15)
  [3235] How we make our programming courses both time and cost effective - (2011-04-09)
  [3816] Want to escape the Olympics? Learn to program in the countryside! - (2012-07-23)
  [3935] Whether you have programmed before or not, we can teach you Python - (2012-11-25)
  [4172] Public courses - Python, PHP, Perl, Ruby, Lua, Tcl, C and C++ - autumn 2013 and through 2014 - (2013-09-13)
  [4305] Learning to program in Java - yes, we can help. - (2014-09-26)
  [4518] Open source programming courses - October to December 2015 - (2015-09-27)
  [4519] Course Schedule - October 2015 to June 2016 - (2015-09-27)
  [4564] Perl, PHP, Python, Lua, Tcl, C++, Ruby - final public courses for 2015 - (2015-10-30)
  [4588] What teach you in a week stays with you for a decade - (2015-11-29)

Back to Santa on the train to Melksham

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Forward to From Sunday to Monday, from Melksham to the Balkans

A day in Ljubljana
Right up to the top of the City
Connecting to MySQL 5 from PHP on Mac OSX Leopard
From Sunday to Monday, from Melksham to the Balkans
What makes our courses special?
Santa on the train to Melksham
More PHP sample and demonstration programs
Easy selection of multiple SQL conditions from PHP
Upgrade Mac OSX to Leopard, Web Server Apache httpd config lost
Question on division (Java) - Also Perl, PHP, Python ...