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What Would You Recommend for IT Training?
ITPhantom wonders: "It is that time again and my supervisor has been coming around and asking what training and conferences I would like to attend in the upcoming year. I have recently been put in charge of the management and security of a few dozen machines in our department, and our internal network (simple as it may be). While most of the machines that I am responsible for are running Windows, there are a few Linux machines in the mix. I am fairly proficient with Windows, but have not had any real experience managing Linux machines, though I have been a casual user for about a year. With all of the options available, from online training to extensive boot camps and seminars, what would you recommend for training in the areas above?"
If you are around San Francisco bay area, then a training outfit that I very much recommend is LinuxCertified (http://www.linuxcertified.com). I attended a "bootcamp" style class (Linux system administration) there few months ago and it was by far the most helpful IT class that I have attended. I found the training to be very practical in nature. It was distro independent (although they used Fedora during the class itself). Also, I would recommend having a shelf full of oreilly books... :)
I would sign up for a subscription to the safari bookshelf service from o'reilly being able to search such a large library can be very valuable for things you have little experience with. I come from the dev. side so I dont know of many sys admin specific "classroom" type stuff, but I have always got alot out of SD Expo and the many break out session esp. the birds of a feather after hours "tech chat over beers" meetings (It hasnt been as good since y2k but still valuable).
I have gone for training at a few different places. I liked my the Learning Tree in Linux/Unix Security and Solaris (also some Windows) because their instructors were good and had a lot of real-world experience. The difference between RTFM and a classroom is that you can ask questions, and others in the class may even have questions of their own they want answered. Some of my instructors at LT were writing open-source packages you've heard of, others had run Unix security at government agencies you've heard of. Learning Tree has actually refunded money for classes that were insufficient when people complained they didn't get what they needed. They'll work to get you back.
Boot camps are different. They are for people who need to be certified quickly because their work requires it. The hours are longer, the class is geared more to passing the exams, and pressure is mcuh greater. Not everyone handles that kind of pressure. I've done boot camps for my MCSE (!) upgrades at Acrew, which is no more, and a CISSP at The Training Camp. My primary CISSP guy at TTC was awesome with a decade of large-bank systems security experience, but the trainee (who taught one chapter only -- physical security) read straight from the powerpoint slides.
The most important thing is the instructor and his or her experience. Talk to people and see what they've done. That's how I initially found Learning Tree. In my world, training is regular and you need to figure out where to spend your training time and money. (For me, coming up with a free four or five day period to be away from the office is harder than getting the money for it.)
One word of warning: although Learning Tree is accredited and offers college credit, when I applied to grad school they didn't accept the credits because I didn't get a letter grade. It wasn't a big deal but slowed me down one semester. I'm now one semester away from a master's in Information Systems. IS vs. Computer Science is a whole other debate. Grad school and training end up costing about the same per course: $2000-$2500. Grad school covers theory, training covers technique.
I don't know about the rest of the slashdotters, but from the experience i got from college i would get some books on the matter before attending any kind of training. I know this is not the quickest way out, but is the thorough way, and believe me sometimes in IT doing it right is much more important than doing it quickly.
That all depends on which mode of learning suits you best. Generally, this is broken down into (1) learning by touch/doing, (2) learning visually i.e. reading, or (3) aural learning where you listen to someone speak. There's some crossover between the 3 types but most people can identify a primary method as optimal for them. It's important to know where you fall in order to pick training that suits you.
Me? I'm kinesthetic, which means I do my best learning by working with the problem at hand or taking what I read on the page and putting it into practice to internalize it. I'm also a strong visual learner and can pickup concepts quickly when they are presented to me in print. But aural learning is difficult and I don't do well in sterile classroom / lecture environments that don't involve immediate hands-on learning.
For the most part, I pickup my knowledge from books and online articles. I try to plow through at least one technical book per month (on average). Otherwise I'm just coasting and generally falling behind those who are more motivated. That, and I like learning new stuff.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
For IT in general, a class in interpersonal skills would be beneficial.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I'll second this recommendation for LISA. The tutorials are a good way to get a base understanding of a specific topic. (The tutorial schedule for LISA'06 is not yet announced.) Check out other USENIX events as well, http://www.usenix.org/events/
While I've never personally paid to attend a USENIX conference, my employer has paid for me to attend several.