The Object-Oriented Thinking & Techniques Workshop™      

There are many software professionals using object-oriented tools without object-oriented thoughts!

There are plenty of courses out there that will teach you about UML or some "design methodology" (or notation). They'll go through their set of slides and their canned examples, and certainly that will teach you something about objects. So many of them, however, miss the boat on teaching how to really think in terms of objects and how to leverage that type of thinking. Instead they teach you a particular technique or tool and often either misleads you into a false sense of security or the incorrect notion that objects aren't fundamentally different than what you already know.

But with this workshop you will go much, much deeper. Although we do introduce some "industry standard" techniques, we also focus on how not to let these techniques get in your way. You'll "get to know objects" by a series of hands on exercises that build upon each other. You'll learn by doing! In addition to this, you will benefit from the insights of someone who has been successfully applying objects to the real world since 1985, not just someone who has been introduced to the topic of objects and has been given a curriculum to teach. Our aim is to get you to learn and use objects in many different ways, and for you to do the work so you can go beyond the surface to a deeper understanding of what this object stuff is really all about.

The goal of this workshop is simple, to make sure participants are capable of approaching software problems from a well-grounded object-oriented perspective. We pack a lot into our simple agenda. Interspersed are "war stories" used to turn the exercises which are small enough to be done in this sort of setting into a springboard of insight from which you can apply what you've learned in industrial settings. When you are done, although you may not be an "object guru", you will never think of objects as simply a new way to model data or a simple repackaging of old techniques again. One seminar participant said:

"I took this seminar while taking an OO course at NC State. I now wonder if I even need to continue with the course, and if I do continue, if there is anything useful that they can add to what I learned in Ken's seminar." - Karen Read

So we don't do a lot of canned presentations. There are some, but we keep them short. About 70% of the class is non-lecture and very interactive. We believe this is, by far, the best way to learn. But don't take our word for it. Here is what one of our participants said:

"What was the least useful part of this course? I thought all aspects of the course were useful. I enjoyed Ken's teaching methods and think his personality & expertise aided us in learning OO concepts. I give this workshop an EXCELLENT rating." - Chuck Johnson, ABB

Although there are no prerequisites (we do have some recommended reading for those who don't know the basic OO Concepts), and its primary targets are those with little to no OO experience, this is not just for beginners. We don't want you to think that you've got to be ignorant of object-oriented concepts to benefit from this workshop. One person who had been using C++ for several years before attending this workshop told us he was a bit shell-shocked by how much he learned from this experience. His final comment was "now I need a rest". This is not an atypical response of people who have attended our workshop after several years of experience using so-called object-oriented tools. Another participant said:

"I have taken courses on OO languages but these mention design methods only as an afterthought. This workshop is an excellent (and fun) introduction to OO design and I recommend it highly to both new and experienced programmers." - Carlisle Trimble, Software Engineer Staff Specialist, Data General Corporation

Even with feedback like this, the workshop has evolved and we're always striving to improve it based on adjustments suggested by participants and our own observations.

We offer a 2-day, 3-day or 3.5-day version of the workshop; in the latter, we begin to tackle a problem you bring to the table on the last part of the 3rd day. The target size of this workshop is 12-20 people, but we are flexible on the size.