[Noisebridge-discuss] Charging for classes at Noisebridge

Josh Myer josh at joshisanerd.com
Fri Jul 16 23:47:52 UTC 2010


The Kickstarter idea a really neat model that hadn't occurred to me as a
candidate here.  It works well for many money problems.  The next time I do
a big workshop, I might try it out, since it's a great way to gauge
interest, as well as motivate myself to develop a solid presentation.

That said, one of my goals in running for-pay classes is to ensure that
(most of) the people attending are invested in the material.  As Dan*
mentioned, it becomes hard to do an iterative class when your students come
and go.  I understand the social awkwardness around asking to get in for
free.  That's why my announcement for the PCB repair workshop ended with an
encouraging:

  "No one turned away for lack of funds. Drop me an email in advance, and
we’ll work something out. I’d love to have you there!"

I had someone sign up who couldn't afford the full thing, so I worked with
them.  They agreed to pay a part of the materials (significantly below
cost), and I was really happy to have another motivated student in my
class***.  I'm also more than happy to barter, exchange, or something else.
 It's really about exchanging value, so the other person is showing
commitment to the goal.  Also, it goes without saying, it is clearly
excellent to pay if you can afford to.  This, again, comes down to the
recognizance thing; I trust that anyone who's willing to say "I can't afford
to pay for these parts" isn't lying to me, and will let them borrow any
extra materials I have.  This, for me, is simply a part of being excellent
to the community as a whole.

Beyond the initial phase of "Please pre-register" and the beginning of the
class, though, the workshops are still technically free.  It's not like
anyone can say "You can't listen to me talk!" at 2169.  A person giving a
seminar can't realistically dismiss someone's legit questions with "I'm
sorry, you didn't pay to be here today, go away." If they did that, they
would lose the social support to fill their future classes.  As someone on
the instructor side of things, I think this is a pretty good compromise, and
I'm happy to embrace it for my workshops.  That said, people teaching
workshops (paid or not) still need the leeway to answer questions with "If
you'd been here last time, you'd know that" and/or "Read chapter 3,"
regardless of whether or not someone has the textbook.  It's kind of a
politeness thing at that point, and/or a utilitarian thing (choose your
philosophy).

Another big motivation for me is simplifying governance.  Not adding a rule
forbidding for-pay classes fits in with our current governance model.
 Roughly, I understand it as "There's one rule, be excellent. There are also
guidelines: when you see something that's clearly unexcellent, talk to the
person about it; if it continues to be a problem, bring it up with others/on
Tuesday."  The last time I was involved in a rules meeting, I was on the
side of "We need rules."  Sure, we wanted rules to deal with something that
hadn't happened yet, but it was going to.  In the end, we continued on with
"Be excellent, speak up," and it's worked astonishingly well**.  I used to
think this was a recipe for unmitigated irresponsible disaster, but I've
watched how things have unfolded in the last year, and I'm convinced:
noisebridgers are a reasonable lot of people.  There have been rough
patches, but I don't see how having rules would have helped much at all,
certainly not as much as they could have made things worse.
--
/jbm


* Who, now that I think about it, has probably done more classes than I did,
which is awesome.  I'm hoping a bunch of people can get as involved with
transmitting knowledge.

** The last big rule discussion I recall, we were discussing how to deal
with disruptive/dangerous people at 83C.  I've caught wind of a few
incidents which were handled by individuals, reasonably, and without a
formal process.  It's amazing how responsive people are to someone stopping
to say "When you do X, you're dangerous to others, possibly getting
noisebridge into serious police trouble, etc, please stop or do it another
way."  When that doesn't work, asking again, then asking them to leave seems
to have sufficed every time.

***   In a twist of irony, they wound up with a gig the day of the workshop,
but I'm making sure to keep them in the loop on the next time I give the
class, and will happily give them the same discounted rate.
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