I am a recent graduate of the Masters' Program in Information Management and
Systems at the University of California, Berkeley. One of my emphases at
Berkeley was in XML, but, with everything else I had to do, I didn't have time
to look into XSLT as deeply as I wanted.

Then, just last month, I had the opportunity to take a course in XSLT, XQuery,
and XSL-FO offered by Crane Softwrights, Ltd. It was a great course, and I now
feel vastly more at home in XSLT, and very well acquainted with XQuery and FO,
which I didn't know at all going into the course. The course consisted of five
8-hour days on XSLT and XQuery and three on FO, and covered the entire W3C
recommendations.

The instructor was G. Ken Holman, principal of Crane Softwrights and a
world-class expert in XML. Ken was a member of the committee that developed XML
and a founding chairman of both the XML Conformance Committee and the XSLT/XPath
Conformance Committee. He is co-editor of the OASIS UBL 2.0 specification and
chairman of the OASIS Code List Representation Technical Committee.

At the end of the eight days, I told Ken how much I liked the course and that I
thought a lot of my classmates in the San Francisco Bay Area would be interested
in taking it over the summer. After talking it over, we decided it was worth a
try to set something up for July or August. We also thought it would be great
if the course had a mixture of full-time students and XML users from workplaces.
The course would be conducted at a hotel in the area, such as the Embassy Suites
in Walnut Creek. Ease of access by public transportation, such as BART, would
be a requirement. Based on the results of the survey and success in finding
corporate participants, I'll follow up with another posting as quickly as
possible.

At this early stage the dates have not yet been selected and will be determined
based on the feedback from a survey soliciting interest.

You'll find the survey at

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=7DK2sxNiXHTSQQXvtJZtcw_3d_3d
The cost is expected to be approximately US$500-US$550 per day (the lesser price
for former customers, early registration and multiple seats).

These are the most in-depth configurations of Crane's XSL and XQuery training
classes, covering the use of every element, every attribute, every keyword and
every function of both XSLT/XPath 1.0 and 2.0 and XQuery 1.0, and every
formatting object of XSL-FO 1.0 and 1.1 with more detail and more exercises than
other available configurations of Crane's material.

Use the links that follow to view the course syllabi:

Practical Transformation Using XSLT, XQuery and XPath (5 days):
http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/training/ptuxq/ptuxqsyl.htm

Practical Formatting Using XSL-FO (3 days):
http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/training/pfux/pfuxsyl.htm

The venue for the courses is to be determined, but will be in the
Berkeley/Walnut Creek area, California

For those who are unfamiliar with Ken Holman's extensive credentials, here's a
link to his bio:

http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/bio/gkholman.htm

For those who still cannot make it to the new class, we have extended the free
worldwide shipping of our hyperlinked interactive 24-hour XSLT DVD-ROM video
product:

http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/training/ptux/ptux-video.htm

If you are interested in having Crane Softwrights teach publicly or privately in
any area of the world, please contact Ken directly (gkholman at
CraneSoftwrights.com).

If you are interested in this July/August training, be quick to select your
preferred dates before we lock in.

Thanks!
-Jim Miller, MIMS, UC Berkeley School of Information, Class of '09