Comments on: Personal software training: a niche waiting to be filled?

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:08:50 +0000

With so many applications and softwares to even connect to machines from remote locations, the world definitely has become a smaller place.

By: Edwardo Stehr

Edwardo Stehr — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 10:43:04 +0000

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By: Ted

Ted — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:17:11 +0000

Hi Corinne,

Your post is very interesting. It can help telecommuters looking for new ideas.
I’d like to publish it at my site about remote access software and telecommuting. Is it possible?

Regards,
Ted

By: Gabriel Rodino

Gabriel Rodino — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 08:26:06 +0000

Great post. With so many tools available to coaches/consultants nowadays, you don’t even have to travel to their home and could very well do many of these tasks remotely. Remote apps such as TeamViewer, video or web conferencing systems that are very affordable and the power of fast internet connections means you could be a personal XYZ coach to someone in Florida while never leaving your house in Chicago, making your income stream even larger.

By: Judy Jenner

Judy Jenner — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:58:30 +0000

Good idea, and excellent points from Kevin and Riccardo. In general, I think it’s a great idea. My twin is trying to teach me Translation Office 3000, and even though I am definitely a software power user, it’s super frustrating (her fault, not mine). I bet there is a a market out there for these kinds of services, but as others have set, you’d have to put a lot of thought into the details to eliminate as many variables as possible. @Kevin: I am speechless about some folks not knowing what a directory is. That makes the training job almost impossible, doesn’t it?

By: Maxim

Maxim — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:06:02 +0000

Nice idea, Corinne. Though I’ve got some experience as an instructor at a ‘PC for beginners’ course, I’ve never thought of applying this skill to translation software.

How would you market this service? Our marketing workflow is generally oriented towards customers, not colleagues. For instance, offering this through one’s profile on Proz.com seems useless, as freelance translators generally don’t visit other freelancers’ profiles.

By: Kevin Lossner

Kevin Lossner — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:52:12 +0000

Some caution is advised here and consideration that one should never underestimate human ignorance. I once watched a well-planned Trados training seminar be completely derailed when it was found that many of the participants didn’t even know the basics of a computer’s file system and were baffled by words like “directory”. You can’t even blame the user-unfriendliness of Trados for that one.

In general, however, I think it’s an excellent idea, but I would not commit to any time estimates until a clear assessment has been made of a user’s basic knowledge and organization skills. For example, I have a very strict system of organizing files for projects, which is intended to aid in finding information in the archive later. Many people opt for more “natural” systems or quickly diverge from the structure I propose, only to find that files are not easily located later. Where possible the software training should include recommendations for organizing information created/processed with the software so that the learners can derive maximum benefit.

By: Riccardo

Riccardo — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:14:03 +0000

Hi Corinne,

Very interesting post, as usual.

To anybody interested in becoming a personal software trainer, I would suggest to first take the time to learn precisely how much time each specific task will likely take.

This could be done, perhaps, by training some friends and acquaintances for free: the future trainer gets the benefit of learning how to teach and how long it probably will take, the friends the benefit of learning from the future trainer’s expertise.

I consider myself a Trados power user, and a couple of years ago volunteered to teach the basics of the program to a fellow translator. Based on my experience, I estimated it would not take more than a couple of hours.

However, I ended up spending more than eight hours teaching the software: things that I had thought would be easy were difficult for this colleague, and the more difficult concepts harder still.

Once the future trainer has sufficient gained experience to be confident of his or her estimates, I would suggest to estimate high – people are going to be happier if a six-hours estimate becomes five actual hours of training than if the estimate had been for three hours only but the training then took four.