Just thought I'd share what I've done so far and see if anyone here has any tips for improvement.
I was a qwerty touch-typist averaging ~80 wpm according to both typeracer and hi-games' 5 minute typing test. I'd been using qwerty for... 8 years or so. I'd only really begun typing regularly during the last three or four years though.
I switched to colemak cold turkey along with my switch to running linux full-time. I average about 6 hours/day of typing, including maybe 2 or 3 of programming. Learning was, in the beginning, extremely frustrating.
I started with an average speed of 15 wpm. After a week, it had increased to about 25. Another week and I was at 35-ish. Now, another week after that and three weeks after the switch, I'm at 55-60 wpm, able to reach 80 in bursts. My accuracy hovers around 94%, but I can achieve 100% accuracy by sacrificing a small amount of speed when I'm feeling patient.
I learned the layout entirely through use of IRC, posting on a forum and the typing games mentioned above as well as performing administrative tasks on my own and school computers (I am a huge fan of CLIs).
So far I love the layout and my main focus is on increasing my speed. Do you guys have any tricks that could help? I'm racing on typeracer about 30 times/day and doing the hi-games tests of all different lengths several times/day already.