An update for old friends

From time to time, old friends from the days that I was presenting courses for First Alternative get in touch with us - we're always delighted to hear. It seems a long time since I was training on Solaris in Harwell with Mick Hosegood and Peter Burton, and a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then.

In 1996, I wrote the first Well House Consultants course - on Perl - after repeated requests from customers. The course was fronted by First Alternative as at the time they had their own facilities and we didn't. It was a huge success and Java courses followed about a year later. Quite quickly, I found myself only presenting my own courses and Mick found that a very high proportion of his business was being brought in by a contract trainer - a situation that he wasn't prepared to have carry on.

So - in summer, 2000, we took on the sales and marketing of our own courses, and all invoicing and collection tasks too, bought our own equipment, and opened our our training centre in Melksham, Wiltshire. We were fabulously placed to provide courses that the customers wanted - we had learnt in the business, Lisa and I were (and remain) enthusiastic.

But any business should look forward - using history only as a learning tool to help us know how to do better in the future. So where are we now?

Our courses cover Perl, PHP, Python, MySQL and Tcl/Tk with some Linux and java topics - but we can't cover every aspect of those huge subjects
We run regular public courses at our own training centre in Melksham, Wiltshire, UK
Private courses are tailored to customer needs and run on site at their offices - mostly in the UK but also elsewhere in Europe and even further afield.
Prices are good, facilitates superb, trainers fully trained, class sizes limited to a sensible maximum and we have policies and systems that we think make us "a step above".
We research and write all our own materials (samples online) and our "Of Course" newsletter

Things are busy - at times almost too busy - but what a great situation we have; we enjoy what we're doing, we meet a lot of extraordinary people, and we earn enough to feed and clothe us too.
(written 2004-09-03, updated 2008-05-10)

Associated topics are indexed under

G210 - Well House Consultants - History
  [3510] The skull above the door in Melksham Town Hall - (2011-11-06)
  [3149] Looking back at www.wellho.net - (2011-01-28)
  [2999] 2999 - looking back - (2010-10-15)
  [2968] Well House Consultants - a potted history - (2010-09-23)
  [225] 10 years and counting - (2005-02-23)
  [164] Well House Consultants - review of 2004 - (2004-12-31)

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Some other Articles

Do languages change?
A Thousand and four words
Take the train to training
A Change is as good as a rest
An update for old friends
Security and Safety
Tesco at 5
Autumn arrives right on time
Linux / LAMP course
10 Years of experience

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This is a page archived from The Horse's Mouth at http://www.wellho.net/horse/ - the diary and writings of Graham Ellis. Every attempt was made to provide current information at the time the page was written, but things do move forward in our business - new software releases, price changes, new techniques. Please check back via our main site for current courses, prices, versions, etc - any mention of a price in "The Horse's Mouth" cannot be taken as an offer to supply at that price.

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