Some weeks ago, I flew down to Dusseldorf, Germany to do a quick TDD training with a friend of mine for a (rather big) bunch of people. The session didn't go quite as smoothly as some others but we also couldn't spot any clear warning signs during the training. It certainly wasn't like David's jaws-drop presentation on Rails but we thought it went ok.

Well, the attendance did go down throughout the day as people didn't come back from breaks but that's business as usual in the company so we didn't think twice about it. Besides, it would've been a small miracle if a room of 45 people including several managers would've stayed for the whole duration of a rather pure technical full-day classroom training.

The feedback we got afterwards really took us by surprise on some accounts. Apparently, we had lost some of the audience right in the beginning because of certain communication issues. We also screwed up some things involving cultural differences--things that were an issue in Germany even though it hadn't been in Finland so far (even though our cultures seem to be very close). It took a while before we could put together an analysis of some sort about the things where we went wrong, sitting at an airport cafe munching on overpriced but oh-so-delicious sandwiches.

We also realized that our content was too thick on theory and too thin on practice. Unfortunately, many companies prefer to "spread their peanut butter thin" by squeezing 20, 30, or even 40 people into a training--which leads to the session becoming more of a lecture rather than a training. At least for the majority of participants. Luckily, I've heard that they've themselves acknowledged that it's better to go for high-bandwidth communication with fewer people than low-bandwidth communication for more people.

I've long recommended to my clients asking for training a sequence of shorter sessions spread out rather than a single, more intense multi-day training. The reason being that it's difficult to absorb that much new ideas and new techniques without having the time to play with them a bit and to mirror them with your ongoing projects. This spreading out is not about spreading it thin. It's about spreading it just thick enough.

Anyway, it looks like I might be doing some consulting in Germany in the near future. I'll have to try and observe myself and my surroundings a bit more carefully this time. Oh, and I hope I'll actually get to meet some old friends this time around -- the last time I missed both Frank and Ilja because of bad timing and a tight schedule.