One of my favorite things to do is to teach people about OpenNMS. I am one of the main trainers, and I usually run the courses we hold here at OpenNMS HQ. I often teach these classes on-site as well (if you have three or more people who want to attend, it can be cheaper to bring someone like me in for a week than to send them here), and the feedback I got from a recent course at a defense contractor was “that was the best class I’ve ever attended, except for the ones I got to blow stuff up.”.

Unfortunately, a lot of people can’t spare a week away from the office nor do they have the training or travel budget to come to our classes. And teaching them can be draining. While I can easily talk about OpenNMS for hours on end, it is much harder to do for days on end.

To help with that I’ve decided to record the lessons in a series of videos. I am not a video editing wizard, but I’ve found a setup using OBS that works well for me and I do post production with OpenShot.

The first class is called “OpenNMS 101” and we set it up as a video playlist on Youtube. The lessons are built on one another so beginners will want to start with Module 0, the Introduction, although you can choose a particular single episode if you need a refresher on that part of OpenNMS.

My goal is to put up two or three videos a week until the course material is exhausted. That will not begin to cover all aspects of OpenNMS, so the roadmap includes a follow up course called “OpenNMS 102” which will consist of standalone episodes focused on a particular aspect of the platform. Finally, I have an idea for an “OpenNMS 201” to cover advanced features, such as the Drools integration.

I’ve kept the videos as informal as the training – when I make a mistake I tend to own it and explain how to fix it. It also appears that I use “ummmmmmm” a lot as a place holder, although I’m working to overcome that. I just posted the first part of “Module 4: Notifications” and I apologize for the long running time and the next lessons will be shorter. I had to redo this one (the longest, of course) as during the first take I forgot to turn on the microphone (sigh).

We have also posted the slides, videos and supporting configuration files on the OpenNMS project website.

I’d appreciate any feedback since the goal is to improve the adoption of OpenNMS by making it easier to learn. Any typos in the slides will be fixed on the website but I am not sure I’ll be able to redo any of the videos any time soon. I think it is more important to get these out than to get them perfect.

Perfection is the enemy of done.