With technology going strong, many people are looking to spiff up their
skill set. San Francisco-based AcademyX Web Training
has the machines and instructors ready. President and founder Stephen
Fraga chats about the Web, training, and how to spend your nights.
What does AcademyX provide?
We're a computer training firm specializing in Web-related technologies,
both programming and design. Our classes are instructor-led and
hands-on. Each student gets a computer with the appropriate software to
practice what they're learning during the class. Our instructors have
all worked as contractors in their respective fields; we've hired
teachers who are not only subject matter experts, but also great
communicators. We offer short courses in HTML, Dreamweaver, Flash,
JavaScript, XML/Schema/DTD, XSL/XSLT, CSS, PHP/MySQL, Perl, Java/JSP,
VB.Net/ASP.Net, ColdFusion, ASP, Apache, and IIS. We've been in business
for over six years.
Why do you feel there's a need for what you provide?
There are so many opportunities made possible by the Web--and so few
people ready to take full advantage of them. Practically every company
has a Web site and many of them are just starting to use the new
technologies and tools emerging in web programming and design. Despite
what you may have heard, there are still many new dotcom business
opportunities and many of these will use the latest web technologies.
Conversely, there are many software programmers and print designers that
have skills that could quickly be adapted to work on these projects.
What makes your company unique?
We specialize in Web-related topics and we have great teachers. No other
Bay Area training company has such a diverse set of offerings in Web
technologies and so many experts in those fields. We run frequent, small
classes taught by instructors with both industry experience and teaching
expertise. We rarely reschedule classes.
What kind of challenges does your company face?
Keeping up with the changes in technology is very challenging. We
constantly have to revise our courseware to adjust for the changes in
standards, such as those with the XML family of languages. As a training
business, we must also make the best use of our staff and facility
resources, so optimally scheduling the classes is also high priority.
We have some competition from national training firms. They have larger
client lists and more visibility, but they offer a fundamentally weaker
product. They have much higher overhead since they have to fly out an
instructor and rent a training room from a hotel--and this means that
they're more likely to reschedule a class if they don't get enough
registrations. We'll run a class if we get just two students.
Where do you want to build the company from here?
As an ongoing goal, we're always trying to improve our existing
resources, be it the courseware we're using, the hardware the students
work on, or our database of subject matter experts.
Another major goal this year is to draw more customers toward our
long-term evening classes. We offer mostly short courses during the
daytime for corporate clients, but we also have a long-term, A to Z Web
design program that runs for 24 evenings, twice a week. It covers
everything from registering a domain name to optimizing your site for
search engines, with a focus on HTML and Dreamweaver. This is ideal for
individuals who can't take time off from their daytime jobs or want an
in-depth, thorough course on Web development.
do you know a local company we should cover? Let us know about it.
Send your local profile candidates to dan@computeruser.com.
