jim_neophyte,
I asked a similar question over 3 years ago and got some great responses. See Convincing co-workers to learn Perl for details. Ultimately, the thing that worked was having a technical exchange brown bag lunch sessions. Essentially, individuals volunteer to share their knowledge of a subject during lunch. People then have a perpetual variety of topics to learn about during their lunch break. I have found it very successful and rewarding at the two places where I helped institute it.