Recent Training in Crystal Reports

In late 2006 and early 2007 I undertook to learn something about using Crystal Reports. This is the report writing software package that is now owned and distributed by BusinessObjects. I signed up and took four online web courses at the BusinessObjects web site. Apparently they have the full course content of the classroom versions at half the cost. I completed them and finished by the end of January.
The course work went fairly fast -- I had already used a dozen different report writing packages over the years. I hope that I find some use for all this training since I am currently unemployed and looking for work.
Crystal Reports is one of Vancouver's software success stories. I can remember applying unsuccessfully for jobs 20 years ago in their little office on Pender Street in downtown Vancouver. Considering all the big software success stories on the West Coast of the US it is interesting that there are so few big success stories from Vancouver. We have companies that have done well here -- such as AccPac or Entertainment Arts -- but they always seem to get bought out by a much larger company.
I think that it might have something to do with our old resource based economy. We have long been a world centre for things like Fish Processing, Mining and Forest Industry companies. At the same time that Seattle was making Boeing jets, Fremont California was making Fords and LA was making movies; we in BC were making cedar shakes and canned salmon. I am not sure how the fact that San Jose, CA was the apricot centre of the world fits into this theory, but it there must be some reason that Hi-Tech never took off in the same way here as it did further south.