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Summer 2000
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[SCENE: Exterior of Harrods department store, Knightsbridge, London. Cut to interior, Harrods ice-cream parlour. Jon and Elkie are seated at a table set with gleaming silverware, starched white linen and two enormous chocolate sundaes.]
Elkie: To what do we owe the honour of the great Jon Sisk coming across the Big Pond to visit us in the UK once again?
Jon: Gee – I just missed the folks and love the UK. Seriously, I’m in the UK for 3 weeks working with Hill House Hammond and Pick Systems UK on a new advanced-level training curriculum.
Elkie: Sorry, but we’ve heard this before. Not so long ago there was some hype about Jon Sisk and JES coming to the UK - now we’re hearing Jon Sisk and Pick Systems training coming to the UK. Will it happen this time? Why didn’t you come last time?
Jon: I’m not sure anyone but you remember that, but thanks for remembering anyway. Yes, I was looking at possibly expanding into the UK when I was at the Pick Systems conference in Sherwood Forest in 1997. We had had our best year ever domestically that year and I was simply exploring the market to see if it made sense. It didn’t at the time, but now things are considerably different, in that we – Pick Systems – are already here. We are working on expanding our educational offerings here and are actively moving towards having our first training “super” centre in the London area. So yes, I think it will happen this time.
Elkie: You were head of JES, a well-established successful company with years of reputation, why leave this and become just a VP of Pick Systems?
Jon: Well, I consider myself more than “just a VP”. Like all Pick Systems employees, I’m a stockholder in the company and have a vested interest in its success. I just traded up. I wonder what the perception will be on the reputation part, but I can assure you that we will continue to do what we do the way we always have. JES brings to the table a talented group of diverse people and teaching skills and will continue as an unbiased, autonomous training division.
Elkie: It must be reasonably hard going from being a well-known independent businessman to being at Pick. What’s the transition been like for you?
Jon: Exhilarating! We have been incredibly busy behind the scenes since March of this year, working on our plans for the new Pick education initiative. While I have spoken about it at a few public occasions, I can now officially announce that the merger of JES into Pick Systems is complete. JES: Just Educational Services is now a wholly owned operating unit of Pick Systems, and will continue to operate under the JES name, maintaining the independent and unbiased reputation it has built-up since 1981. What it simply means is that JES has a bigger reach now and Pick has a credible training division. We both complement each other’s needs nicely. My transition from CEO of JES to VP of Education and Training at Pick has been very smooth so far and it’s been great having additional resources at my disposal to get things moving from the start. With JES functioning as its own separate operating unit, it’s not much different than it was before, except that I am now accountable to more stockholders. [laughs]
Elkie: So now JES is basically a subsidiary of Pick Systems, will you be restricting your classes to only Pick?
Jon: No, much more than that. We are keeping all of the JES inventory and adding to it. There are 11 different course lines in the JES inventory, plus several more from Pick Systems’ inventory that we will be merging. JES will continue to be the source for not just Pick, but UniVerse, UniData, Linux and a whole lot more.
Elkie: The UK frequently feels a little left out so it is nice to see you in the UK but generally the noise and energy is always in the USA. Your training courses were always geared for the USA what about the UK?
Jon: [grinning] Truthfully, we’ll have to make a few changes in the training materials for the local market, being England, where there are still a fair number of humorous differences in our spoken and written language. But this will merely be a simple appetizer before the main course of offering our educational offerings in multiple languages, translated for the local region. Our distance-learning modules will likely be the first to be translated. [Interlude involving much ice-cream, Wimbledon, American/English humour, baiting and unseemly amounts of laughter.]
Elkie: What is new at Pick Systems?
Jon: Lots. We have new financing, a very robust and talented management team, a rejuvenated and growing staff of employee-owners, and a very strong commitment to education and training. That’s where my job begins. JES is now going to be able to accomplish things that were formerly beyond its reach.
Elkie: And future plans?
Jon: We have many projects in the pipeline at the moment, probably the most exciting thing will be our Distance-Learning, self-study courses. We are staffing up to be able to offer our entire array of courses on-line, on-demand, through the Web, in multiple languages. We have some great tools chosen for this and it will be one of the more visible aspects in our new Web presence, which will be unveiled very soon. Another project well under way is our initiative to get Pick into Universities. The University of New Orleans is our pilot site for training a whole new generation of fresh talent in Pick. Working closely with the MIS Department, we will be offering a comprehensive “boot camp” series of four weeks of training for graduates. We already have strong interest from recruiters and employers, who obviously will benefit the most from the student’s completion of “commercial” training. We will also be working closely with them on our Distance-Learning products, as they are very much a pioneer and presence in that space. A permanent JES/Pick training presence will be in the UNO facilities, where we will run the full spread of our courses on a regular basis for commercial clients. Finally, we are also visiting with the Computer Sciences Department at UNO about possibly including Pick in the regular academic curriculum.
Elkie: If you’re planning on getting Pick into Universities, what about technical certification? For example, along the lines of an MCSE type recognition?
Jon: Do you remember something JES invented about ten years ago called the “Pick Technical Certification Program”?
Elkie: [grinning and winking] Only just!
Jon: A large number of people do, particularly the 500 or so that took the exams with us in the first years of the 90’s. We created a database of questions spread out across all technical spectrums of “generic” Pick and devised a means of generating a test set of 150 random questions, so each test was unique but balanced towards its intended recipient. The questions were carefully screened – and solicited from – some of the top Pick talent available at the time. The certifications consisted of Certified Pick Systems Administrator, which encompassed a skill set that was strong in all operational areas except Pick/BASIC. The next level, Certified Pick Programmer, was slanted more heavily towards those that tended to code, and the Certified Pick Professional combined the two. While that particular generation database is out of date, we are resurrecting the concept and will begin bringing it up to date and expanding the specializations.
Elkie: Once again, this all sounds great but what about the UK?
Jon: I’m hoping to expand beyond just having company training locations and to encourage other training companies to become Certified Pick Education Centers, or something along that line. By combining forces, we can only be stronger, as I see it, and there are some very talented people out there who we would love to have as partners.
Elkie: Anything else?
Jon: I can also report that thanks to our JES training materials being owned ultimately by Pick Systems, you will likely see new documentation efforts coming out soon. The Pick documentarians recently sat through a JES class and are keen to get on a new project we are calling a new “Pick Cookbook”.
Elkie: [exhausted from the energy levels Jon Sisk is exuding] Is that all now?
Jon: No. Watch us closely. It’s a new era at Pick, and I’m very excited to be part of its future. Not only will we be expanding our “analog” courses, where people can have live contact with an instructor, but we will also be releasing lots of new training and virtual-community resources through our Web site. This will include on-line classes and documentation, message boards, searchable knowledge bases, FAQs, and much more.
[Pull back from the table with its empty sundae glasses, crumpled napkins and smiling protagonists to the bustle of the store as it begins to close. Fade.]
Elkie Holland
If you have any questions of your own, feel free to visit the following web sites for more information: http://www.jes.com and http://www.picksys.com. Alternatively you can email jsisk@picksys.com
Last Updated: 28 Sep 2000