[Novalug] Tutorials? YES ! ! ! Charge for them? Hmm...

Matt Good matt@matt-good.net
Thu Dec 14 17:04:55 EST 2006


On Thu, 2006-12-14 at 14:51 -0500, Matt Bidwell wrote:
> Dan Arico wrote:
> > On Thu December 14 2006 1:26 pm, James (Jim) Darlack wrote:
> >> Im very interested in tutorials.  However, charging for them?  Well..
> >> that all depends on the amount charged.
> > 
> > The reason I mention charging for some of them is two-fold.
> > 
> > 1. So far as I know, no one in this group is so filthy rich that he 
> > doesn't need to earn some money. Being able to charge would make it 
> > worthwhile to expend considerable effort to put together a good course 
> > on fairly involved subjects. In fact, I believe we have some members who 
> > do this full/part time already.
> > 
> > 2. Putting up some cash indicates a commitment to follow through. There 
> > is nothing I find more discouraging than starting a course and seeing 
> > people drop out before it's finished.
> > 
> > For fairly short tutorials, I can see an argument for free or nominal 
> > charges to cover printing course material and so on. For the level of 
> > effort involved in a longer course, free would be a notable act of 
> > charity.
> > 
> > Dan Arico
> > 
> "Charging" might not be a bad idea.  I once attended a get together
> with a friend.  I think they would do this once of month or so.
> Anyway, one of them would get up and give a prepared talk, and
> after the talk was over, to ask questions you had to pay a dollar
> per question.  All the money at the end would then go to the speaker.
> Something similar could work.  If you have a bunch of people who
> give talks in round robin, and everyone gave a talk, eventually
> you'd make all your money back. This assumes everyone has at least
> one thing they would study and learn enough to give a talk about.

Yeah, I think that if you're expecting people to prepare some longer
tutorials some payment would be appropriate for the effort required.
However, I think it'd probably be better to start off small to get an
idea of the interest so speakers will know if there may be enough
attendance to make their preparation worthwhile.  The $1 per question
idea is interesting, but I wouldn't want people to feel reluctant to ask
questions because they're paying for them.  Did it seem to work well in
practice?  Maybe as a small incentive for the shorter tutorials
attendees could chip-in to treat the speaker to lunch.  

-- Matt Good




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