Thomas J Piwowar and Associates, Inc

This place is a hidden gem, to brush up or add onto your tech skills. Affordable, strategic, quick and not even painful, intense learning. And, for most if not all of the classes, 1 – 1 or 1−3ish max instructor/​student ratio, so personal attention to accelerate your learning curve.
I recommend it to anyone who wants to improve their marketability and wants to learn a key skill or two in software. I took «Building a Webpage» which was a perfect basis for CSS and HTML to compliment my graphic design skills. In two days I was very confident in my ability to design for web, legitimately.
My instructor was Chris and he is awesome, total guru — he matched my pace and we flew through the material, it was fun! I was definitely impressed with the ROI of the class and hope they have an HTML5+ CS3 in the near future.

I attended two half-​day sessions with some coworkers here, a la carte style, for some InDesign training.
It was nice to be able to choose more in-​depth courses; I took the «long documents» class and the «styles» class. I had mixed emotions on our instructor, Casper. On the one hand, he showed us lots of good tips and short cuts for more advanced designers, but there were the odd instances where he couldn’t answer my questions. My feeling is that if you’re going to teach a software class, you should know that software inside and out.
The reason for this three-​star rating is largely due to the receptionist at TJP&A. When I first called to inquire about the classes, the initial receptionist handed me off to someone else – I wish I could remember her name – who was an absolute ass. When I asked if the instructors were Adobe-​certified, she went into this long spiel about how one instructor in particular was certified in being «the best» even if he wasn’t certified by Adobe. «He’s known in Washington to be the best. Just because he doesn’t have official documentation doesn’t mean he’s not the best. Not everyone judges people by what their certifications are.» Pardon, trick? A simple «no» would have sufficed.
The receptionist then told me that the company trained everybody in D.C. who is anybody – namely National Geographic. She said she’d e-​mail me a list of references but it never appeared in my inbox. In the end we took the classes. One snarky attitude isn’t the deciding factor in these matters, especially when you work for a penny-​pinching nonprofit – and TJP’s prices are more than good.
Thankfully I’m pretty much up to scratch on my InDesign skills now, so I hopefully won’t have to attend any more training sessions. I feel like the class i took at IdeaInteractiveMedia last year in Reston was better – but it was twice the price.