The Perfect Training Tidbit – Nuggets

A training idea that I’ve long held in high esteem, but seen little efforts to create is the short training vignette or “nugget”.  I like this idea so much that I look for opportunities to put them in place wherever they can be of benefit.  I’ve proposed them as an idea for the PASS community and we’re already starting to do them at Quest Software.  You can take a look at a demo nugget for our product called Performance Analysis for SQL Server at http://www.quest.com/Quest_Central_for_SQL_Server/dba_tale.htm.

Broadening the discussion of nuggets even further, Tim Sneath’s blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2005/02/02/365838.aspx) mentions the efforts of the Microsoft’s UK office to create a large number of short, easily consumed training nuggets for SQL Server.  The wonderful thing about these nuggets is that you can learn a useful tip or technique in just a few short minutes.  Take a look at http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/events/nuggets.aspx to see a nice, little listing of .Net and SQL Server nuggets.

I’d love to see Microsoft or even PASS assemble a host of these from the public in to a huge public library of training content.  What do you think?

Thanks,

-Kevin