First Exposure

It rained rather heavily in Bangalore this evening. That has been the case over the last few days anyway. I didn’t hesitate though, to walk home a mile from Sun Labs, drenching myself thoroughly in the process. I might catch a cold ‘cuz of this, but I was too excited this evening to even think of such an outcome.

Indian Film Makers believe that the rain invokes romantic feelings. I don’t intend to question their thought in here. But for me, I had a different reason to be excited about: the first ever teach on Access Manager 7.1. It concluded this evening, and it has given me some wonderful memories to cherish. In retrospection, I had some smooth sessions spanned over five days, largely attributed to a brilliant course developed by David Goldsmith. I must also not fail to mention the support received from people high up in the hierarchy of Sun, in answering some of my basic questions. Thanks again to David for connecting me to them. On the whole, it was a good learning experience for me, if not for anyone else.

Picture below has the set of people, first exposed to the Access Manager 7.1 course offered by Sun Learning Services. A couple of my participants are missing from this snap.

Some of them found the lab materials very interesting, while a couple of ’em felt it be slightly lengthy. But most of them agree that the course covers a wide area on the Access Manager Product. Rightly so, this course touches upon Authentication, Authorization, SSO and Federation using Access Manager. Of course, a discussion on Federation itself can span several days at stretch and for this reason, only the relevant information to understand the concepts of Federation is what is included in this course. An interesting change in this new revision of the Access Manager course is an introduction of a couple of business case studies on Federation, which gives the audience an understanding on the basics of Federation Identity Management. This is a brief feedback that I fetched from the folks in the picture above. Only time can tell their actual take back from this training.

I didn’t have to spend much time convincing my new friends on the importance of a “teach back” session and the enthusiasm that they showed to talk about various topics that constitutes the AM 3480 Rev B course this evening was commendable. More than anything else, it was sheer fun. I enjoyed every bit of it and couldn’t resist the temptation to capture it. It would be unfair if I don’t display their efforts in the form of a few snaps at least.

I’m sure their interest on Identity Management Solutions would help them go places. And I would certainly put my efforts to keep track of their progress in this field. Wishing them good luck for a grand future.

The rain has stopped. I’m going to hit the sack soon, with a hope that I wouldn’t have to bear a running nose tomorrow.