Sun, 13 Aug 2006

The Long Tail of Rails Training

I returned from a much needed vacation with my wife and kids last Wednesday to find out that Obtiva's first Rails/TDD course is close to selling out. I'm excited to meet the attendees in a couple weeks. My fellow Obtivians and I are working hard to make it a unique and rewarding experience. The structure and spirit of the course will be inspired by The Coder's Dojo which I had the pleasure of participating in last year.

While on vacation I started reading The Long Tail book and so it was through that lens that I interpreted the news about the Rails course upon my return. When it comes to Rails trainers, I would guess that the distribution of success (as defined by reputation + number of trainings provided) follows the same power law seen in this graph, with the excellent Pragmatic Studio guys way over on the head. They are the blockbuster training group, no doubt about it. And in our celebrity-centric, hit-based culture, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that they're the only game in town. But there's enough demand for Rails out there (for now) to generate some nice business for people down on the tail.

This is an interesting time to be part of a small startup like Obtiva. There is enough demand in our industry right now that we find ourselves openly cooperating with several other small firms rather than competing with them. I guess that might change when the market turns south, but I find it to be an encouraging phenomenon among companies on the long tail during times of abundance. And I wonder how that cooperation will affect those companies during times of scarcity. As more small companies offer Rails training it could be in their best interest to extend that collaboration into their course materials.

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