How to get more from trainings and seminars

    Each year, more and more educational events are held in IT: conferences, trainings, seminars, community meetings, webinars, etc. Many take care of their development and education, attending interesting trainings in order to familiarize themselves with new technologies, practices and approaches. This really allows you to save time and get a lot of information in a short time. My article will discuss how to make attending a training more effective and useful. This is a kind of instruction for participants. For whom it is relevant, I ask under cat.

    I decided to share my pain and play a little Captain Evidence. I have quite a lot of experience in organizing public events for 10-1000 people, including various trainings (public, corporate, coaching). People come to trainings in order to gain new knowledge, motivation for their application and changes in their current project, systematize existing knowledge, and simply expand their horizons. At the same time, the logical goal of the training participant should be to obtain the maximum level for the money spent (in other words, ROI).

    Unfortunately, in most cases, participants do not try to get more from the training, and often they do not try at all. I want to give some advice to those who go to the training in order to really study:

    • Study at least superficially the topic of training. If it is familiar to you, then systematize knowledge, make a list or mind map of areas of interest to you. Take the time to update the information if you have not already encountered the topic of training for a long time. Thanks to this, you will have an idea of ​​basic things and will be able to more easily perceive new information.
    • Make a list of questions for the training. Scroll through your head and remember all the points related to the training topic with which you had problems in practice. Formulate a list of questions for the trainer for yourself and be sure to take it with you. It is also useful to synchronize questions with the training program in order to ask them at the right time, without looking ahead, but without delaying to the very end.
    • Be sure to check whether presentations and other materials from the trainer will be issued. This will help you not to do too much work and not to outline information that is already available. You can only make important notes and then synchronize them with the materials, devoting more time to receiving new information.
    • Get ready for the training technically. If the training takes place on a technical topic and you need to bring a laptop with installed software, then do all the preparatory steps in advance. Do not just install the software, but get the initial level of its application. To do this, you should turn to colleagues for help, read the manual or part of the book, try the basic things in practice. Just try, because the theory may not be so simple. What is it for? Usually there is not much time for practical tasks and it’s very foolish to lose it on basic things like installing software and trying to learn how to use it. Instead, you should gain new knowledge and try in practice what the trainer has prepared for you.
    • Come on time for training. Being late, you make two mistakes at once - you have less time to put yourself in a training state (drink coffee, have a bite to eat, go to the toilet, prepare a workplace) and you miss meeting the trainer and participants. You will not learn about the problems of other participants, the specifics of the trainer, the structure of the training, or organizational issues. And this means you will not be so productive in the training, which is stupid with the money spent on attending it.
    • Take a break before training. You should not hang out on the eve of the whole evening in a bar or club, get drunk with friends, and then think nothing the next day. You can do it after the training.
    • Be sure to bring a notebook and pen. Even if the thought seems obvious to you, you will forget it anyway (it will simply be supplanted by other thoughts). Better than a notebook and pen there is nothing for such information. Electronic devices (phone, tablet, laptop) will distract you more.
    • Do not be distracted by a variety of devices and external sources of information (mail, Skype, Internet). Our brain is not so simple and, falling out of context even for a short time, you will not be able to return back very quickly. A constant switching of context leads to rapid fatigue, which significantly reduces your productivity. Is this what we are trying to achieve in the training?
    • Feel free to ask questions. If you misunderstood something, ask the coach, discuss with colleagues at the break, ask a question after the training, but in no case do not forget. Any doubt and misunderstanding leads to two processes - you are constantly thinking about this in the background and you may misunderstand further information. And this is fraught with the fact that you will soon “get lost” and the coach will have to spend a lot of time on your return to a common understanding.
    • Do not argue with the coach. The dispute is one of the most expensive training sessions. The psychological structure of the dispute is very complex and the winner is not always the one who is right. Therefore, do not waste your time and group time on disputes. If you do not agree with the opinion of the coach, then ask clarifying questions, give counterexamples, but do not argue. The discussion can be continued at the break or after the training, if you do not change your opinion before this time. Many people resist the experience and opinion of others, so they can’t wait to pour it all on the coach and the group. Do not do this - this is not your goal of attending the training.
    • Never leave training ahead of time, especially from multi-day training. The risk of skipping something important, on which all the rest of the material will be based, is very great. And you will no longer be able to continue to work on training with the same level of productivity. Postpone your business or do not go to training at all. Partially acquired knowledge can be much more dangerous than ignorance. :)
    • Communicate as much as possible with other participants in the training. You gathered in one place not by chance - you are all interested in the topic of the training. You have different experiences, different problems, but often you have solutions for each other or just useful information on the topic of training. It’s stupid not to get it, just sitting on breaks on the Internet or mail.

    I will be glad to hear your recommendations in the comments! Perhaps I will post my observations and tips on actions after the trainings. But that's another story ... Go to the trainings productively!

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