10 Places to start Your journey

My dearest darling is very supportive, he even visited this blog. Then he told everyone who would listen that it is not in any language known to man.

If you concur, here are some great places to make your first strides:

1. The book shelf - read "The Goal" and any other business novel or book by Dr. Goldratt (there may be a new one on the way), add "The Choice" after you've read a few of the others; it is a bit harder, even though it is still an easy read.
2. Join Dr. Goldratt's basic workshop "TOC for the Ever Flourishing Company" at the Goldratt House, even people who have been around Theory of Constraints concepts for years told me they found value in this workshop. This is not overly expensive as the workshop costs about $250 but you do need to pay for travel and accomodations
3. Attend a TOCICO event in person in a conference (here is some data on the 2010 conference) or through the web in a webinar. You can also commit to a Theory of Constraints certification process and start taking the exams. Costs start as low as $40 for a webinar, through $100 for an exam to about $2,000 for a conference. Note that some activities require you become a member of the TOCICO which costs about $200 (less for people in academia)
4. Join the Goldratt Schools program. They offer different programs, some are offered only as a whole and in some you can attend only the sessions you are interested in. From what I understood of their web site joining the whole program costs $10,000 up front + another $10,000 success based fee to be paid only if real life results of X10 the basic fee are achieved (meaning you pay $20,000 for real life results of the scale of $100,000, I think that's quite fair, if you can come up with the $10,000 to begin with)
5. Use the self learning tools put out by Dr. Goldratt's team such as the TOC Insights self learning program ($80 per subject, $800 for all) or TOC.TV (this has some free content but is mostly pay per view and subscription based)
6. Use this highly recommended site. I've been referred to this site many times and it always came highly recommended, but I still have to give it a deep scan, so I can't chime in with my point of view at this time.
7. Visit the "Focus and Leverage" blog, written by Bob Sproull. This is a step by step intro into TOC for people and organizations, with a specific focus for those already involved with Lean and 6 Sigma. Bob has reached step 31 by now and hopefully will continue adding steps soon.
8. Take a class at the university, or even go the whole way and get a certification or degree. For example, Dr. James Holt holds classes and has a full certification program at WSU, that are also available as web courses. There are other US universities with Theory of Constraints focus, such as the University of Tennessee. Internationally you can find programs in Poland, Ukrain, Colombia, Taiwan, South Africa, India and more. Many other Universities offer only single courses on the subject.
9. Dr. Goldratt's blog is a great place after you've picked up the basics, full of "golden nuggets" and extensions, it is in Theory of Constraints jargon and a novice could easily get lost. Once you're up to speed, though, it is the place to be.
10. Goal Systems International, a Theory of Constraints consulting firm with some of the biggest names, has very good topic specific articles in the "papers" section of their web site