As a new season is upon us we begin to make preparations for the influx of new employees that must be trained to our clients standards. For some, this will be their first job. For others, the passion of working in the entertainment industry is enough to justify their reenlistment. Those that returned from the previous season are battle hardened and ready for another season. A little older, and little wiser. For new employees the first person they will likely meet will be a park/department trainer. Ultimately this person has the difficult and complex task of transferring the knowledge, skills, rules, and expectations of the organization to many different audiences. The skills learned in training will reflect upon the park as a whole for the entire duration of the season. A great trainer is an employee who has the experience, knowledge, and persona to address employees in many different age groups with many varying levels of experience.

Understanding, engaging, and entertaining your audience is a great way to deliver a message across. If you walk into an auditorium and start preaching about company polices like your reading from a book, the likely hood that your training program to succeed is going to diminish. However if you walk into an auditorium and immediately entertain, and engage the audience. Your prospective employees are going to be more apt to pay attention and absorb the knowledge you are giving them. From the moment you start talking they must be able to easily relate to you, and trust you. Employees are equally the heart and soul of any park, as much so as any ride or attraction. With out their dedication and support success would be very limited.

The role of the trainer is always evolving, there is always room for improvement in the training material and methods. Annually evaluating employee performance as it relates to the training material, and adjusting policies as necessary should be part of your standard training procedures. Another important role of the trainer is address employee grievances. Some of the most common training mistakes we see are rushing threw the training material. Not stressing the importance of procedures and policies, and trying to force feed information. Trying condense three days worth of training material, and two days worth of department training material into two one day sessions is just to much.

CEO – Michael Jordan:

This week we announced the release of our No limits – USB Control Panel and launched our new weekly TPI blog.

The Nolimits – USB Control Panel

One of the many services we offer here at TPI, is automation and control system consulting. The USB Control Panel was originally created so that we could mock up control systems for various rides. When we build a control system, we put a lot of time and effort into making it robust, user friendly, and most importantly safe. We recently used this prototype to develop improved operator panel layouts, research new safety interlocks, and as training tool. It is a tremendous advantage to be able to show a potential customer a working copy of a proposed control system long before any work is actually done. This product could even be used in a simulator format to train new operators on a ride. It is no different then technologies developed for airlines, railroads and the military.

Going into the public launch of our nolimits version, we knew that there was little chance that a reasonable retail price could be achieved. The control board, relay module, and buttons alone make up a significant portion of its cost. Nolimits has no software API, so a significant amount of time went into the development of the relay driver. Given the limited interest in this product by the general public, it has been decided we will only be producing ten publicly available units. So far, we have orders for almost half of those. Far more then we had hoped.

The TPI Blog

Today we officially launched the TPI blog, we plan to update it once a week on Friday. We might even be coming to a social networking site near you, stay tuned!