The road to Critical Path Training started in Los Angeles in 1992 when Ted Pattison began to deliver training classes and to write technical courseware as an employee of QuickStart Intelligence. In 1995 he began teaching and writing developer-targeted courseware focusing on VB and COM for DevelopMentor where he had the opportunity to work alongside Don Box and his crew of C++ heavyweights. Throughout the height of the Internet bubble and into the bust that followed, Ted continued to gain visibility as a expert in .NET development through his writing, teaching and conference speaking.

By the spring of 2003, Ted began to seek a new technical niche because he no longer felt challenged when teaching basic training classes in VB.NET, C# and ASP.NET. After a brief courtship with the beta version of SharePoint 2003, Ted decided he had found true love and committed his professional career to researching and educating .NET developers on this product. His passion gave rise to a short-lived training company in Los Angeles named Barracuda .NET which was entirely dedicated to developer-focus training on SharePoint 2003 technologies. By the end of 2004 Ted's published writings and speaking engagements won him the recognition of the SharePoint Server MVP award.

Meanwhile on the other side of the country, Andrew Connell (or AC for short) was beginning to make a name for himself as a prominent .NET developer with a focus on Content Management Server 2002 (CMS). His expertise led to several opportunities where he was hired to integrate CMS together with SharePoint Portal Server. Given his professional accomplishments and the popularity of his blog, Andrew was recognized with his first SharePoint MVP in April of 2005.

In June of 2005, Microsoft's Developer Platform Evangelism (DPE) team hired Ted and Patrick Tisseghem (a dearly-departed friend) to collaborate together authoring a hands-on workshop on SharePoint 2007 development. Ted was able to work with SharePoint 2007 server and become intimately involved with its inner workings 18 months before the product was released to the public. Throughout 2006 while SharePoint 2007 remained in a small private beta, Ted flew around the world teaching Microsoft's top ISVs how to leverage all the functionality and the developer extensibility that had been added into the new version of the product.

In business as in life, timing is everything. Ted moved to Florida in late 2005 and opened Ted Pattison Group, a SharePoint 2007 training company targeting professional developers. Just after Ted arrived in Florida, a local Microsoft developer evangelist named Joe Healy introduced him to Andrew. Ted and Andrew instantly hit it off as they begin discussing ideas on software development, on SharePoint and on the instructor-led training business. Andrew quickly become a prominent course author and instructor for Ted Pattison Group with his leading expertise on Web Content Management and the SharePoint 2007 Publishing features.

In addition to Ted and Andrew, the instructional staff at Ted Pattison Group picked up several more of the industry's most talented SharePoint MVPs including Scot Hillier, Shane Young, Todd Klindt, John Holliday, David Mann and Randy Drisgill. With an incredible team of course authors and instructors and the promise of SharePoint 2010 looming on the horizon, Ted and Andrew decided the time was right to up the ante on their infrastructure investment and renew their commitment to continually recreating the best SharePoint training company in the world. Hence the birth of Critical Path Training. We see a very bright future with this new company and we certainly hope that you will be part of it.