Saturday, March 28, 2009

28th March, 1989


Today, 28th March 2009, marks the 20th anniversary of my first day at work with CBT Systems (which became SmartForce in 1997, and SkillSoft in 2002). I was dressed in a suit with shirt and tie and I took the bus from Llewellyn Park in Rathfarnham where we lived at that time. I still remember the walk down Mount Street to No 39/40 and a very nervous ring of the bell. The receptionist (Olive Bolger) let me in and I was introduced to Ronan Fitzpatrick who would be looking after us for training. He showed us some CBT content and it was the first time I had ever seen some. In my interview for the job I did not know what the letters CBT stood for (Computer Based Training). There were two others starting the same day, including Kate McCarthy who is still with the company. I had a great 13 and a half years leaving with the company, made some money, traveled quite a lot, and took voluntary redundancy in 2002. I still have some of my business cards from my time there - perhaps the best job I did was as Production Manager (as in card above) responsible for getting courses completed on a monthly basis from four production centres. It seems like a lifetime ago when I started - a lot has happened to me in the intervening 20 years.

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