Stockholm syndrome 2.0

I recently completed 2 days of certification training in Stockholm. This was actually my first time instructing a developer course on my own. Remember I got certified as an instructor back in November.

To start of with the hard facts, all the attendees passed the certification exam. Well done guys!

 

The training facilities in Kista (Stockholm's equivalent to Silicon Valley apparently) was quite nice, and the "classroom" offered all the necessary equipment as well as endless resources of coffee. However I quickly learned why they did not charge for the coffee. No one in their right mind would dare to charge anything for the brown foamy soup that came out of the self-service push-down cannisters. But being a caffeine addict, I somehow managed to drink it anyway.

 

The very interesting bit for me in doing the certification surfaced already during the roundrobin personal introduction. 4 out of 5 developers had all previously worked with the local Swedish competing product for a couple of years. So basically I had 4 chances of proving why Sitecore is a world-class product which is way ahead of the competition. I know this sounds harsh and very business oriented, and in reality it is not the purpose of the certification. Basically as an instructor you need to be objective and cover the material the best way possible and simply guide the students. Once they go through the course, they will realize the facts themselves.

To my great satisfaction, the students quickly caught on to the hook and expressed how the structure and the concepts of Sitecore was well crafted, and more flexible than what they were used to.

So you can easily say that Stockholm, or the suburb of Kista (pronounced 'Sheeesta') felt like a very welcoming environment, despite the luring threat of the bad coffee and the cold and wet winter of course. I wouldn't mind going back there some time.

Till then.