My annual Black Friday sale over at BrentOzar.com just finished. Every year, I try different experiments with it – changing bundles, adding lifetime memberships, adding buy-now-pay-later, etc. One of this year’s experiments was to add live classes back into the mix.
When I launched them in October, I explained that the time had come to update the material for SQL Server 2022 and Azure SQL DB, and as long as I had to record them myself to update the material, I might as well teach the classes live.
I didn’t offer a Live Class Season Pass as I have in the past. That option was wildly popular because people could just pay once and attend any class that their schedule permitted. However, I didn’t wanna offer that this time around because I was going to teach very few live classes, and I was only going to teach them in one time zone (US-friendly). Instead, I just let people buy tickets for a specific class on a specific date.
And… only 3 people did.
1 person bought a single ticket for a single date of Mastering Index Tuning, another person bought a single ticket for Mastering Query Tuning, and one person for Mastering Server Tuning. That’s it.
You might say, “Well, Brent, maybe the stuff you teach is no longer relevant, or people have heard enough of you.” But here’s the wild part: the recorded class sales were fine. It was only the live classes that simply didn’t sell.
I did sell a handful of seats to the cheaper Fundamentals Week class, so that one will stay on the schedule, and I’ll continue to sell tickets for that.
But my schedule just completely freed up for 2024, hahaha, since I don’t have to be home on specific dates to teach the Mastering classes. I love the bejeezus out of that. I’ll start recording the updated Mastering classes next week, doing that on my own schedule, and updating the recordings in folks’ accounts. That gives me more time to work on new stuff.
And to drive around. By the way, we wrapped Sabine in metallic pink for the Barbie movie this summer. It turned out really well.
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I know many companies are refusing to pay for training and even make employees take a vacation or personal day to attend them, even while personally paying out of pocket. The post covid world has companies gambling on “return to work” and cutting back on employee development.
Right, but it does seem odd that companies would continue to pay for *recorded* training, just not *live* training, doesn’t it?
Not really – I think that the companies are expecting their employees to watch the recordings outside of working hours.
They can’t afford to have employees off work for live classes, but assume that the employees can have a few hours less sleep per week to watch the recordings.
While my company wants us to get trained and keep training I find that my department is not that way and it takes so much paper work to justify an expense that it just becomes more difficult than it’s worth. Most training I do I end up doing via LinkedIn and I tend to not tell my boss about it because then he just asks “Why are you doing that?”
Maybe part of post COVID is that employers are afraid we will get trained up and leave but at the same time they are giving us a reason to leave by making it difficult for us to get training.
Right, like I mentioned in the post and in the other comment, I would totally understand if *all* training revenue was down – but it was just specifically *live* training, not *recorded* training. That’s the part that’s interesting.
My company doesn’t pay for either of them… Some companies just don’t see the values of these, no matter what arguments are being made. It’s the third year in a row I am asking for these, specifically these, and I got turned down. I am seriously contemplating paying myself for these…
I strongly recommend it; Brent’s training is well worth the money.
In the 90’s, pretty much all training was in-person. There was a common expectation and an acceptance of expense, time-off, and travel.
Today, HR expects that I’ll use free or low-cost online training, or something provided by the company, which they consider equivalent.
So, Geeks are being filtered by whether they value the in-person training experience (which I would GUESS is a significant minority). They’re further filtered by those who can make the reduced dates and locations work. Whoever is left is likely to be running a more difficult approval gauntlet than would have been the case even a few years ago.
Put that all in a grinder and turn the crank, and what drops out the bottom is roughly what you’re describing. (Although I agree that 3 people seems extreme!)
Or, maybe it’s a vast DBA conspiracy to make you entirely reliant on Twitch streaming for your car-money. What do I know? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The training isn’t in-person. It’s online.
Yes but the World has changed.
People are afraid to call and they prefer to send messages instead: https://www.quora.com/Is-it-weird-that-Id-rather-text-than-talk-and-being-on-the-phone-gives-me-anxiety.
It’s more impersonal. People don’t want to share feelings and they tend to prefer recorded classes over live classes.
(Not me, I took a plane to see you at the Data.TLV Summit and it was awesome!)
I dunno, I’ve been that way for 20 years. I haven’t answered my phone in decades.
Also: around a decade ago there was a teacher that was doing live classes but once he couldn’t attend the live class so he recorded that.
Then he asked to the students if they preferred live classes or recorded classes and they replied: “recorded classes”.
He was frustrated and he sked why. The reply was: “…teacher, in live classes if we don’t understand something and we dare to ask you to repeat something you repeat that but in a different way because you think that you haven’t explained that correctly.
But this is not what we want. We were maybe just not focused and we just want you to repeat it in the exact same way. And with the recorded classes we can do that!”
BOOM!
That made me realize so much about education and about how important is to repeat.
And this happens to me too: sometimes when I read SQL Server documentation I have to re-read 3-4 times the seme phrase to understand it.
Just joking… 10 times at least.
Just joking… I never really read documentation
The BBC have changed the format of some of their shows. Much to the horror of middle England, the popular Newsnight show has been reduced from an hour to thirty minutes. The BBC have said that people’s viewing habits have changed. People are watching on catch-up and in smaller chunks. I wonder if you’re seeing a similar pattern of changes in ‘viewing habits’. Although it is training, people are potentially bundling it with their viewing habits. Just a thought. Best wishes for 2024 and beyond!
Thanks ma’am! Yeah, my viewing habits have certainly changed. I’m much more likely to digest stuff in smaller chunks.