Training course recommendations

[luke_j_nelson]

My company gives me the opportunity to attend a training course every year relevant to my job. Previous years I have taken CCA, Apple Snow Leopard 101, and prior to Mac relevance, Windows 7 support. This year I will have a larger role with packaging and deploying applications using the Casper suite. I'm pretty familiar with it, having taken the CCA course and a year or 2 experience with packaging and deploying. I've been implementing scripts more in the past few months than I have been, and I'd be interested in developing that skill. Our company is upgrading our Macs from 10.6 to 10.8 sometime this year, so I could look for something related to that. Does anyone have recommendations for a training course that focus on one of these areas? Is Lion 101 that much different than Snow 101? I'd also be interested in some sort of a conference.

Thanks,
Luke

[jarednichols]

Myself, if you're keeping up with the major OS releases and poking them pretty deeply the OS courses aren't going to give you much information. I'd focus on finding a scripting course of some sort as shell scripting with any Mac management tool is supremely useful.

[JPDyson]

Myself, if you're keeping up with the major OS releases and poking them pretty deeply the OS courses aren't going to give you much information. I'd focus on finding a scripting course of some sort as shell scripting with any Mac management tool is supremely useful.

Yes.

[mm2270]

I would also second Jared's recommendation. In our line of work, good scripting skills becomes almost essential. Could you get by without it? Probably, but life wouldn't be as easy.
For me, I've never taken any official Apple courses or certifications and it hasn't hindered my career that I'm aware of. I may take some of those soon but only because its beneficial to the company I work for, and for me in this position in the long run, not because I really have to.

[RobertHammen]

I'm an Apple Certified Trainer and yeah, the Mountain Lion 101 course is an evolution of the Lion 101 which was an evolution of the Snow Leopard 101. May not be relevant for your situation.

I'd save up your $$$ to attend the JAMF National User Conference... will be tons of relevant sessions on packaging/deployment, peer networking, etc. If you have funds left over, invest in something like PSU MacAdmins and/or MacTech and you should be well-covered...

[donmontalvo]

+1 to what @jarednichols and @RobertHammen posted...to be fluent on command line stuff is a good thing. :)