Have you ever heard about or attended a Pluralsight Study Group? If you’re new to the concept, Pluralsight provides a subscription for a study group that can be used to access Pluralsight’s entire content library. Study group leaders then organize meetings where a group of people get together and watch and discuss courses over a span of several weeks depending on the course.

I had the opportunity to visit the New York Pluralsight Study Group while on a business trip and was really impressed with how interactive the group was. Instead of having people sitting around listening to a speaker present, asking a question every now and then and then wrapping things up, the NYC study group reviewed a portion of a course, paused the video, and then interacted with each other to discuss the code, how it could be used, and more. It was a different approach that really opened my eyes to how interactive a group can be when you can completely pause the content to discuss it more in-depth. Here’s the group I met while in NYC – it was a lot of fun!

In addition to watching a course I presented a few concepts and had a lot of fun meeting the different people. Additional study groups are springing up all around the world now in Sweden, NYC, Philadelphia, Ohio, Manila, Bangalore, Odessa and many other locations.

While at the Pluralsight Author Summit earlier this year I had the opportunity to interview Steve Woolley who’s the Director of Marketing at Pluralsight and talk about what a Pluralsight Study Group is, how Pluralsight helps, and how to get going if you’re interested in starting a study group in your area. If you’ve ever run a user group before and struggled to find speakers month after month then you’ll definitely want to check out the study group option since you’ll never have to find another speaker again! It’s definitely a different approach to the standard user group meeting that can be really interactive. If you’re interested in starting a study group watch the interview below and visit http://pluralsight.com/training/Community/Sponsorships for more details.