[Tuglist] Trainer

[Radhakrishnan CV]

>>>>> "HSR" == H S Rai <hsraidce@iitr.ernet.in> writes:

    HSR> Today at 8:29am +0530 Ajit Ranade wrote:

    Ajit> niit will train students in TeX if they perceive a big
    Ajit> enough demand for TeX trained people. most demand in india
    Ajit> is coming from publishers/vendors to publishers. this group
    Ajit> seems to prefer training their TeX staff in house.  so we
    Ajit> miss out on a spillover effect outside these companies into
    Ajit> the general pool.

    HSR> In that case it appear that it is against the interest of
    HSR> this industry to make available manpower trained in TeX. If
    HSR> this industry publish advertisement "TeX person needed",

Indeed, often I have seen advertisements in the press requiring
persons trained in TeX, but not as freqently as for other mainstream
language trained persons. However, the problem lies mainly with TeX
itself, which is learnt from the word of mouth of a practitioner just
as in the old "gurukulam" fashion and its confinement to places of
higher learning. The academy oriented nature coupled with the public
domain nature of TeX distanced the training centers from TeX, wrongly
assuming that there is no money left in it.

The reality is far from this, a rough estimate by Ajit says that at
least 10,000 people work on some form of TeX in the industry and
academy of which text processing industry may have the better
share. Further, from a developer point of view, writing TeX programs
fetches very good money than any other language (probably owing to
less number of developers). So it is economically viable, if someone
comes forward boldly to run a good training center for TeX.

    HSR> public will come to know that there is requirement for this
    HSR> and they want to have training. IHMO, NIIT like institutions
    HSR> generate demand. Just take example of hardware vendor Cisco.

A proprietary company can do a lot of marketing miracles, whereas free
software can seldom be expected to compete with them or employ similar
strategic tricks of marketing. Users Groups are more concerned with
technical problem solving rather than marketing, because mostly
hackers rule the Users Groups.

[...]

    Ajit> ... the fact that kerala govt is sponsoring TeX related
    Ajit> effort is very promising indeed.

It is premature to say anything at this point of time, however,
believe me, government of Kerala, TUGIndia and CSI are having very
serious discussions to create a viable institutional model to promote
TeX and bring it to the masses through a series of micro-enterprises
sprinkled across the country. I will get back with more details as
soon as we reach a point when we can announce.

    HSR> No doublt, Govt.  help may prove very helpful, but there is
    HSR> past experience that Govt. sponsored projects were not able
    HSR> to create much impact,

You're not wrong in assuming so, but there are projects in front of us
like Kannur Dinesh Beedi Co-operative which became a huge success
story that even caught the attention of International Labour
Organization. So I am not that pessimistic.

    HSR> while with private and public participation project were very
    HSR> successful like cable T.V.  and Internet. If there can be a
    HSR> propoer blend of Govt.  and private participation, then
    HSR> things may move quite well.

-- 
Radhakrishnan