Training courses have lots of good things going for them, but one of the bad things that can happen – especially in live, in-person training courses – is that there’s so much material to cover in the 3 or 5 days of sessions, you’re almost always bound to hit that point exemplified by the classic 1986 Far Side cartoon:
“Mr. Osborne, may I be excused? My brain is full.”
And if it happens early in the session – either because the material is all new or because it’s really complex…or, because it’s just really not very clearly presented – then you can even get multiple “learning hangovers.”
Hangovers?
Yeah, well…fortunately, I don’t really get the real ones, but I’ve had a fair few training experiences where:
…your eyes are so tired from staring at 8 hours of 9pt font on PowerPoint slides with a page layout reminiscent of the King James edition of the Holy Bible…
…which gives you a killer headache, and makes it really difficult to see…
…you’re muscles are sore because you’ve been squinting at the screen, sitting funny and you’ve been taking more notes than you have since university, so your hands have cramped…
…and you might even end up with your tail dragging your tracks shut on the way up to your room where you pass out for an hour or two just to recover some semblance of feeling human…
…before you tackle that overflowing inbox you’ve been ignoring the whole day.
So, yeah…that’s what I mean by a learning hangover.
And they’re not fun, by any definition.
All of the above is one of the reasons that when I put together the content for our flagship Building Effective Security Architectures training course, I tried to make sure it would be really hard to be forced to “over-indulge” on the material. It’s one reason that you can manage your consumption of the material on your own schedule each week, because you have clear deadlines and indications of how long things are really going to take.
But it’s not all cute and fuzzy bunnies, either.
As I’ve said before, it’s work. It’s like a university level commitment for what, at least at UMR would’ve been a 3 credit hour course. That means you have to spend about 5-10 hours per week to make sure you have time to go through the material, do the exercises, and, with our system, have time to complete the peer review process to give your fellow cohort members feedback and suggestions on their interpretation of the work.
The good thing is, unlike university, there’s no grading. Because there’s no “correct” answers to security architecture no more than there is in life. Sure, there’s some answers that are better or more complete or more focused than others, but the point isn’t to get a perfect score.
The point of the course is to give you the practical security architecture skills you need to build the foundation of a truly effective, business-aligned and risk-driven security program that oozes so much value, the business stakeholders have to wipe it off their shoes every day when the walk in the office.
If this sounds like something you’ve been looking for…or if you’ve faced some challenges getting your security architecture practice…well…practical…
…then maybe you should click on over to this link:
Where you can evaluate for yourself if you think the upcoming February cohort would be a good investment of your time and money.
And speaking of money, if you register as part of the Early-bird enrollment, then you’ll save 60% off the standard price of the course. However…you don’t have much time to think about it—especially if you’re going to try and get last-minute approval to spend some unused training budget, because…
…the early-bird discount ends at 11:59pm US/Eastern on the 13th of December (that’s next Friday).
Have a read of the sales page, give it some thought, and if it sounds like what you’ve been looking for, then I’d love to have you as part of the live cohort kicking off in February.
Stay safe,
ast
—
Andrew S. Townley
Archistry Chief Executive
