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Training with The Art of Service

I looked around for a training provider for my ITIL v3 Managers Bridge – it was difficult – especially considering the training and exam have only been live since March 2008.

I called several providers who were claiming to offer training; when I probed on the name of the instructor, references, success rates – there was very little or in several cases no evidential data the course would deliver.

My aims for training seemed quite simple – to learn; to network; to pass the exam.

In the end I selected The Art of Service  – based in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Why? Three reasons:

– they proudly show their passrate on the front page:

Course Name Global pass rate The Art of Service pass rate
ITIL V2-V3 Manager Bridge 34% 75%

– recommendation

– awareness and reputation from The Art of Service “Service Management Podcasts”

So how is the course so far? Simply excellent.

Ivanka Menken is the trainer – she is a co-owner of the company and has been at the ‘coalface’ of Service Management delivery since ITIL v1 days. Good knowledge, personable, real world experience – and a good mix of training styles.

I’m hoping this all adds up to a ‘pass’ – the exam is Friday; results a few weeks later.

ITIL Managers bridge – update

One day left- then the exam.

I must say – the workload and effort for this course is a lot more than for the ITIL v2 Managers cert; there is a lot more reading, homework, mock-exam question taking and general research needed. Also piling on is the ‘body of knowledge’ that is assumed from the v2 Manager exam.

Where did Saturday go?

I got on my plane in San Francisco on Friday night – watching the last of the fireworks.

It’s now Sunday morning and I’m sitting in the domestic terminal in Sydney waiting for my flight to Brisbane.

That’s the worst part of the travel west and crossing the dateline – there’s a day lost from my life.

WordPress dogfooding

Testing WordPress 2.6 beta 1 on the this blog.

Upgrade worked well; no major issues so far.

One point to note – publishing via XML-RPC (i.e using a blogging client such as Windows Live Writer) is disabled by default. You have to turn it on.

SNAG-2026

If you don’t then WLW throws an error:

Server Error –32601 Occurred server error. requested method blogger.getUsersBlogs does not exist

SNAG-2027

On the bus again

I’m taking the Connector bus again to work. An earlier start to set up for todays meetings; but it’s still a lot easier than the commute.

On another green note – composting starts today in my building. All of the cups, plates etc are moving to compostable paper from polystyrene. Good news.