Recently while in Australia I met with someone who says he felt live training was his best method for learning, and didn't really feel CDs or DVDs helped him much.

I had two responses -- one from the perspective of a provider of CDs & DVDs, and one as a fellow student of NLP.

As most of you will have already read, he gave away his problem with that form of learning in how he described his learning process. He didn't really FEEL CDs or DVDs helped him much. Well of course not. After all, we watch & listen to DVDs, and we listen to CDs. We don't feel either of them. Well, you could, I suppose, but that would get old pretty quickly.

In any case I took the opportunity to ask him that apart from live training, how did he get his NLP information? He replied, from lots of books, and also from reading the web.

I then took the opportunity to suggest that his strategy might not be optimal, and while I understood his FEELINGs on the matter, he was actually providing himself a lot of less than useful information.

Thus, in case it helps anyone else, here's my view on the relative usefulness of various materials -- as it pertains directly to the quality and quantity of skills transference received.

1. Live training -- no question about it. Multi-sensory, and, you get both the feedback & feed-forward loops from working directly with your trainer. This is missing from every other form of learning. This is also why so many people will pay far more for live training than they will for other forms of learning. As it should be.

2. DVD's. Gives you the visual, the auditory, the paraverbal, and sometimes lets you practice while you watch (some of the Kinesthetic). No live feedback loops with the trainer, no opportunities to ask questions real-time, but still a good close second to live training.

3. CD's. You get all the auditory -- the verbal AND the paraverbal elements. Critical for providing us good auditory examples of how to do certain things with NLP. No trainer feedback loops, but that's what you get with a CD.

4. Books & published magazine Articles. No loops, zero or few visuals, no paraverbal elements, but, usually good information that has likely been at least partially vetted through the publishing process.

5. The web, including (wonderful) sites like this, and other (less than wonderful) sites where really inexperienced people tend to argue about less-than-useful distinctions. While there are gems out here on the web, material posted on the web has not been vetted through publishing or peer review and often has the flavour of less-than-well-digested ideas.

For those of us who enjoy a global community, discussing NLP on the net has become a daily experience. Useful in some ways, but not what I'd call optimal for learning new skills. Often because you may be trying things out that have nothing to do with NLP, and you don't have any feedback loops with high quality skilled trainers to help you know when you're doing things well or poorly.

I'm a big fan of the web, but not in terms of investing in skills development. For that, I either attend courses, or invest more in my library of home-study materials.

And regardless of what CD or DVD providers you choose, if you find yourself relying mostly on the web for your NLP development, I think you'll be doing yourselves a big service if you fill in some of the gaps in the above spectrum of NLP sources/materials for your own development...

Just my $0.02!