I believe that having workshops where participants spend some time actually getting their hands dirty in some code is more valuable than a developer speaking about what they learned or why they think something is important.<p>People tend to forget about the lunch and learn if there is no hands-on component.<p>In stead of my developers doing a lot of lunch and learns, I would like them to be able to work together to develop small apps based upon some new technology or idea that they have learned.<p>Has anyone set something like this up at their workplace? I'm looking for feedback on the idea and/or better ways to manage these types of workshops.
I've been to too many workshops that outright wasted my time, which were supposedly paid events at that.<p>There are too many technical flaws with the concept. A successful workshop will let a user login to a pre-configured VM lab and follow along. Unfortunately, most of them I've been to get bogged down with provisioning.<p>I have been to many events where I learned more in an hour-long presentation than from a 4-hr workshop.