3DMojo

I expect that everyone has heard of Takeru Kobayashi, a Japanese competitive eater who until 2007 had won six consecutive hot-dog eating contests.

I mention Kobayashi (even though he has been dethroned by Joey "Jaws" Chestnut in the Nathan's contest) because the image of people just wildly stuffing their faces popped into my head as I read Mark Kiker's post on the caddmanager.com blog about CAD training, free food and the rules for making sure the people who come to a lunch-and-learn really are going to be there to learn.

Never one to pass up a good meal for free, even when I can't make heads or tails of the content, I kinda, sorta sympathize with Mark's plight.

On the other hand, the real cure is simple: make sure the training is something people care about.

If I got a training invite for, say, IsoDraw or unraveling a feature history, the only thoughts in my head would be "turkey or roast beef?" "Wrap or pasta salad?" That's because those technical topics would be less relevant to me than the cookies and the desert tray.

OTOH (and you can see this coming a mile away, right?) if the training were to help me make my own product deliverables directly from CAD data, and the training was geared to me, a non-engineering, non-CAD user, well, that's a different story.

I'd still try to stuff 59.5 cookies into my mouth in 12 minutes, but I'd be sitting in the first row, with every brain cell that wasn't involved in chewing focused on the training.

So, Mark, it's about the content. And about making content-creators feel useful. The food is just intellectual lubricant.