The other weekend I helped arrange an expert decorator give an hour’s talk all about painting and decorating. I know the decorator who is a professional decorator with over 20 years experience (including painting the Severn Bridge at one point), and at my local Church there’s a need to get the brushes out and help paint the new building. So putting these two things together along with some volunteers, the idea was born for Roy to share some of his vast experience in the trade.

The plan was to make this longer, actually a whole morning including practical training-on-the-spot and painting walls under Roy’s supervision. Time didn’t allow though, so it was only an hour, and infact only a handful of people in the end including a complete newbie, a few DIYers who had made-do with what they had picked up over the years, and even a lady who is going back to Zimbabwe and wanted to learn decorating-skills to encourage some local people to paint-up some of their buildings.

In the end it was amazing, and beyond everyone’s expectations. What was almost throw-away comments and general thoughts to Roy were pearls of wisdom to us all. Years of experience filtered into an hour’s time, focused by people specific questions and problems, proved worth beyond measure.

It also proved the point that is definitely worth doing this kind of thing for whatever subject and with people you know who can genuinely help out – whether people in your profession, or hobby, or general interest. In terms of some practicalities for arranging something like this, here’s a few pieces of advice:

1. Relax. The more people are in the mode of just an informal chat, the more open people will be both giving and receiving the advice.

2. Questions. Get people asking questions, and have a few up your sleeve as well in case the conversation dries up. Keep them open ended, so with decorating maybe something like how do you do prepare a wall for painting, rather than ‘do you need to always undercoat a wall to prepare?’ which has a simple yes/no answer.

3. Reward. Offer something back to the person who has given, a free lunch, a gift, after all they have given up their time for this (although they will really enjoy themselves).

4. Record. Think of the best way to record the ‘training’ whether just taking notes or an audio recording (you can easily take video clips as well on mobile phones). You can even do this if they are not physically there, for example recording phone calls over Skype free of charge.

5. Communicate. Whatever the best way is to communicate the results of this, whether written notes, a nice video presentation, maybe even images and a power-point presentation.