Meet the SharePoint Training Instructor: Ben "Coach" Culbertson!

Instead of telling you how great the new SharePoint Server 2007 Training is and how much your business can benefit from it, I thought I would give you some insight into the course — in a different way.

So here is a Train Signal Training first: an interview with the Instructor of SharePoint Server 2007 Training Videos — Benjamin “Coach” Culbertson!

Ben has over ten years of web, print, network consulting, and training experience. He has taught thousands of people in the Chicagoland area, including at-risk students at an inner city high school. His teaching style is versatile, high energy, and entertaining — he’ll not only teach you but will also make you laugh along the way!

Ben was kind enough to take the time to sit down with me and answer some questions about the SharePoint course, exams and certifications, teaching, and … even a little bit about himself!

Kasia: What is your favorite thing about your new SharePoint Training?

Ben: SharePoint is one of the few items in IT work that’s fun and easy to implement. So often we get stuck with weird esoteric interfaces, jargon that takes a member of Mensa to decode, and thirty thousand hoops to jump through just to get started. SharePoint was built to be easy to implement by a novice administrator. The whole course was fun to build and record!

Kasia: What is the hardest thing you cover in the SharePoint Training?

Ben: Probably the most difficult item is the Extranet Configuration. Alternate Access Mappings and Extension of Web Apps go hand in hand with a proxy, and I walk you through the whole process. Everything’s easy when you know how to do it but setting up an extranet isn’t as forthcoming as the rest of SharePoint.

Kasia: How did you become an expert in this field and when did you first get certified?

Ben: I had a small five-man web shop back in the 90’s, and we had just started to get into database driven websites when the dot-bomb went off and we went belly-up. I continued to do solo work for a while, and started to get into content management systems.

Since then, I’ve implemented about a half-dozen different CMS sites for different clients, and SharePoint, at the end of the day, is just one more permutation on the same theme. I’m a pretty fair hand at Drupal, Moodle, Joomla, and a few others, and they all work on the same principle.

I’ve done a couple of SharePoint installs for clients, and only recently got off my rear end to go take the exams to pick up my MCTS: SharePoint Server 2007 Configuration. It also helped that the boss paid for them.

Kasia: What other certifications do you hold?

Ben: Well, I was CCNA-certified for a while, but since I wasn’t teaching it, I let it lapse. *blush* I served a two year tour of duty as a high school teacher in the inner city of Chicago teaching the Cisco Networking Academy which then turned into a CompTIA program, but I had to go back to corporate America after I adopted my daughter (and resulting son-in-law).

Here in Chicago, there was a lot of opportunity for a Microsoft Certified Trainer, so I just barreled back into Uncle Bill’s [Microsoft] program. I’m also A+, Network+, CIW, MCSA, MCDBA, MOS, and a few others.

Kasia: What is the hardest thing included on the SharePoint exams?

Ben: SharePoint is a huge hulking beast, and while it’s tough to pin something down, if you’re taking the Services exam, know your server farm stuff upside down and inside out. It’s mostly infrastructure. For the Server exam, you need to be well-rounded more so in your knowledge base. I felt that the Server exam was more straightforward than the Services.

Kasia: What is the best advice you can give to someone studying for the SharePoint exam?

Ben: Get some experience under your belt with our course first. Then, after you feel good that you know the foundations, check out Microsoft’s site for specific exam information for both the 70-631 exam for MOSS 2007 and the 70-630 exam for WSS 3.0.

Read, read, read the theory. Don’t try to go read the Microsoft Documentation until after you know what you’re doing a little more. Reading the tech documentation is a little like watching paint dry, but having some real live experience, even if it’s only on a testing environment like I have the students set up in the course, will help immensely.

Kasia: What distinguishes your SharePoint training from all the others?

Ben: It’s actually interesting and won’t put you to sleep. Plus, I use bright shiny icons all throughout the course. You really don’t want to miss that!

Kasia: How did you decide to start teaching?

Ben: For some reason people seem to listen to me, and then somebody offered to pay me to do it. It was all downhill from there.

Kasia: Besides your work here at Train Signal, what else do you do?

Ben: I’m also the webmaster and technical editor for Reliefjournal.com, and the Editor-In-Chief for Coach’s Midnight Diner, an anthology of horror, crime, mystery and paranormal fiction. It keeps me out of trouble on the weekends. Most of the time.

Kasia: What do you enjoy doing when you’re not working?

Ben: Long walks on the beach, movies, romantic dinners … just kidding. I get a big bang out of playing collectible card games, swing dancing with my wife, rescuing small dogs, drinking coffee while contemplating and discussing the dissonant issues of God and the possibility of the existence of aliens … you know, the usual.

Kasia: Why does everyone call you “Coach”?

Ben: When I taught high school, it just didn’t seem right that the kids call me “mister.” I positioned myself as a coach in the classroom to make myself more accessible. A coach is someone who is invested in your success, both at an individual and team level. When I left the school, I decided to keep the moniker, because IT people especially need somebody in their corner cheering them on.

Over the last six years that I’ve been teaching, I’ve launched a couple hundred careers of adults and high school kids alike, and I plan on continuing that trend here at Train Signal through our video courses.

Just think, an IT coach you can rewind, pause, and replay whenever you like! Now that’s the Best Computer Training on the Planet!

Kasia: Thank you Ben for an enlightening and entertaining conversation and congratulations on the release of your first Train Signal course!

For more information on Ben’s SharePoint Server 2007 Training Videos and to see a free demo visit TrainSignal.

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