Dave Donaldson

In Don Box's latest post, he makes a comment about his old company that he says “confirmed some of my intuitions”. As most know, his old company was DevelopMentor, and there have been some interesting newsworthy items the past year or so. Consider:

• DevelopMentor partners with The Middleware Company (announcement here, my post here).
• DevelopMentor partners with Construx (announcement here, my post here).
• Keith Brown, Fritz Onion, Aaron Skonnard, and Mike Woodring form Pluralsight.
• Ted Pattison and Jason Masterman form Barracuda.net.
• Stuart Halloway and Justin Gehtland form Relevance.
• Chris Sells goes to Microsoft.
• Don Box goes to Microsoft.

Now, I know that DevelopMentor contracts with independent consultants/trainers and other companies to do a lot of their training, but I think there's something else to all this, especially when Don makes comments like that. I've always held DevelopMentor in the highest regard for their training, due in large part to their trainers. Everyone there is top shelf and most are industry experts and authors. Does any of this mean we'll now get the same high-quality material, but delivered to us by a dry, boring trainer? God I hope not.

Of course, I could be playing conspiracy-theorist here, but it does make you wonder...