From left, Collective Idea’s Brandon Keepers, Brian Ryckbost and Daniel Morrison at the beach at Holland State Park.

Web Developers Have
More Fun By The Lake
Pete Daly

HOLLAND — Some young computer programmers who train Web developers had been traveling around the country to provide training to employees at companies such as Xerox and Disney. Now Collective Idea is luring its training clients to them — by pitching the attractions of the lakeshore as a great place to escape for some training.

This summer, Collective Idea, a Holland-based Web application development company, started offering what it calls “hands-on training in a vacation setting.”

It seems to be working.

Daniel Morrison, president of Collective Idea, said the new promotion brought Web developers from around the country to Holland in June for one of the company’s four-day training sessions. All of the people enrolled were provided in advance with plenty of information on what to see and do in the Holland area after hours. One evening, the Collective Idea team even put on a beach cookout for the group at Tunnel Park. At least one of the clients who signed up for the training brought along a significant other for the four-day working vacation in Holland. Trainees represented all types of companies, large and small, including IBM.

Collective Idea was formed by Morrison and Brandon Keepers in 2004.

The idea to put a vacation spin on a business trip to Holland came from "training we've seen other people do and been through ourselves, where you end up at a nasty hotel out by the airport somewhere.

“You're sitting in a conference room all day, and then left to your own devices at night," said Morrison. "We're trying to make it a little more interesting for people, and we think Holland is a pretty good place to do that."

Morrison remembers a time when he and others were holed up for training in a hotel near O'Hare Airport outside Chicago. To their chagrin, they discovered it took too long to get downtown and back in the evening to enjoy the best of Chicago nightlife.

Collective Idea calls its training "Sessions."

“Sessions is designed to stand apart from other training that developers can go to,” said Morrison. “So many times, you go to training and you simply sit in class all day long, and then either go back to your hotel room or wander around the city looking for things to do. It is often a very dry experience.”

He noted that when training is held at a hotel near a major city airport, the hotel rates are typically much more expensive than in Holland — another selling point for Sessions.

In addition to offering a high level of training, Collective Idea also began encouraging students to bring their families, spouses and friends with them, recognizing that it wasn’t only selling the class, but the Holland area. The company offers four days of extensive training, plus group activities that have included dinner at a local brewery, a beach outing, lunches in downtown Holland and trips to local sightseeing destinations.

A major focus of the training offered is Ruby on Rails, a programming language for people who develop Web sites. Morrison described Ruby on Rails as "really just a tool kit. You build your specific application on top of that."

Because Ruby on Rails is in widespread use around the country, there are Ruby user groups in many metropolitan areas — including one that has been active in Grand Rapids for three or four years, according to Morrison. One of the after-hours activities offered to trainees is a social get-together with the Grand Rapids Ruby user group.

ExpressionEngine is a popular Web-based content management system that powers thousands of Web sites around the world. Collective Idea also offers what it calls the first classroom training for ExpressionEngine.

Collective Idea has a Sessions scheduled for this month. Training costs range from about $1,200 to $1,500 for the four days, not counting transportation and accommodations. BJX