Who would be interested in training?
UPDATE : JAN 2024 : Training is now available! See the TRAINING page
For the last 2.5 years, since the end of 2020, a poll has run here to determine the audience of Quickhash-GUI and the kind of users it typically has. I asked this because I was interested to know who typically uses it.
It is perhaps no surprise to discover that of the 1K+ voters, the majority were individuals, downloading it for personal use. However, over 200 of the votes came from government or private industry votes.
And this got me thinking….
The AWS fees for running this project are fairly significant. The donations I get do not even cover the cost of a week of online activity. So I am looking at other ways I could help finance the project. And one area that I THINK may be of interest is online training, in the form of a webinar.
Based on that idea, I am today launching a new poll, to see how many of the current users might be interested in paying a small fee to attend a one or two hour online session. The attendees would receive a certificate that would count towards their CPD points (Continuous Professional Development) and may also be of use in an increasingly accredited world of digital activity, where, for example ISO17025 is commonly in place and overseen by The Forensic Science Regulator and the new Codes of Practice. It is of course not that hard to use QuickHash-GUI for many of the common tasks. In fact, most users probably just drag and drop a file to checks its hash value. But there are some more advanced features to the program that users either might not be aware of, or may not understand the pros and cons of those steps.
In some circles, especially in the UK and I think in the USA, receiving some training, even if it is just an hour or two, from the actual developer of a software tool they use a lot, is considered valuable.
So on that note, please consider casting your vote in the poll so I can determine what appetite there is, or is not, for a training session involving a small fee. I am guessing, at the moment, it would be £20 each, or thereabouts (depending on how much it costs to run a webinar).
Many thanks, Ted.
Who would be interested in training?
- No - not necessary (42%, 56 Votes)
- Yes - but would not pay for it (37%, 50 Votes)
- Yes - would pay £20 (21%, 28 Votes)
Total Voters: 134
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I work with data from non-standard audio-visual devices like CCTV systems and dashcams for evidential use, and often use Quickhash to confirm the integrity of the data as we move it between storage systems and analysis applications. Unlike some standard Digital Forensics, we don’t have one specific ingest platform that has integrated hashing; we don’t have the same budget so apps like Quickhash have been a proper lifesaver for us. Many thanks.
Now we are seeking accreditation, so the provision of training would be pretty much essential. Honestly, if you put the training out there then any lab-based users of Quickhash would be obliged to complete it anyway (and there does seem to be some budget around in the UK right now for ticking off the training boxes). Many of your users are probably very competent with the app but we will now need the certificate to evidence that. Others are probably basic users that follow a simple workflow and are unlikely to follow your blog or respond to you; those are the ones who might benefit a lot from the training.
I’m not a manager so I can’t authorise any budget or training schedule, but I would certainly request any training you were to provide.
Hi Fran. Forgive the delay in replying to you. I didn’t notice your comment and the site didnt ping with a notification. Thanks for providing your thoughts on this. I am very much still considering it and hope to get something drawn up when I get enough time to put something together. If I do manage that, an article will be posted here along wioth, most likely, a homepage notification to sign up. Many thanks. Ted
Training is now available via https://www.quickhash-gui.org/training/