Jamie's Guide to Learning the TEI: [online resources] [print resources] [training]

The most famous and still, I believe, best-online starting point for learning the TEI is C.M. Sperberg-McQueen and Lou Burnard's Gentle Introduction to XML, which in modern revision constitute s chapter 2 of the TEI guidelines.

Among the many excellent guides to specific institutional implementations of the TEI, I recommend
Women Writers Project Training Materials
Emblem Project Utrecht Guidelines for encoding emblem books and for encoding bibliography
Wright American Fiction Project Encoding Guidelines
Virginia's Electronic Text Center Introduction to TEI and Guide to Document Preparation

For further tutorials and guides to local practice, see the Teach Yourself TEI listing hosted by the TEI consortium.

The Columbia Guide to Digital Publishing offers a general history of the development of and environment surrounding the creation of SGML and XML, with a short chapter dedicated specifically to the TEI. A good starting-point for an introduction to the concepts of structured markup.

O'Reilly's Learning XML is an accessible introductory book for learning XML concepts; their XML in a Nutshell is a richer introduction aimed at more technical users. Good conceptual introductions, neither is specific to TEI-compatible XML.

The TEI Consortium's Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange is available from amazon.com or through the tei-c. More invaluable reference guide than gentle learning tool, a print copy of the P4 is nevertheless indispensable for major TEI projects.

Regularly-taught institutes featuring TEI workshops include
"Electronic Texts and Images" and "Electronic Texts in XML" at Virginia's Rare Books School
The University of New Brunswick's Summer Seminar Series: Creating Electronic Texts and Images
The Digital Humanities / Humanities Computing Summer Institute at the University of Victoria

Other organizations regularly offer TEI workshops, such as
XML Workshops at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities

Other organizations and conferences which regularly feature TEI projects include
Digital Resources for the Humanities
Association for Computers and the Humanities

Many groups offer workshops and tutorials on XML and XML-related technologies, such as XSLT, XPATH, XQuery, and Relax NG. While not specific to TEI-compatible XML, these supporting and interrelated technologies are valuable for those acad emic technologists supporting TEI projects.
The 2004 XML Conference, run by IDEAlliance, will take place in Washington in November.
The 14th International World Wide Web Conference is scheduled at Keio University in May, 2005.