Hi everyone,
A couple of people have mailed me about this directly as well, so here's
my thinking:
1. Some people have objected because they dislike Monsanto's business
practices and/or GMOs in general. However, we have instructors who
won't teach at the US national labs because of their involvement in the
nuclear weapons program, others who won't teach at Catholic-affiliated
institutions because of their record of covering up child abuse, and
others still who think that we should have gotten off GitHub last year
because of their treatment of Julie Ann Horvath. I have (very strong)
personal feelings about some of these issues, but everyone slices them
differently, and I respect everyone's right to choose what they do or
don't volunteer for.
2. Other people have said that corporations should be charged market
rates. I'm all in favor of bringing in more money (after all, that's
what pays my salary) but what about Harvard? They're sitting on a $29
billion endowment - should we charge them what we charge the Fortune
500? How about small companies: do we ask a start-up less than we ask
Monsanto? We've already started down this road by not charging admin
fees for workshops in less affluent countries; should the subcommittee
that the executive is putting together to regularize fee waivers look at
charging market rates for companies, affluent institutions, or some
other group?
3. I take Stephen's point about having a lot more companies knock on our
door if word gets out that we can provide high-quality training at low
cost, but I actually think that's a good thing. Many of our instructors
are considering careers outside academia, and I'd be pleased if we could
help them make connections.
This one's likely to generate a long thread, but it's an important topic
- I look forward to hearing more about what you think.
Thanks,
Greg
On 2015-03-04 1:12 PM, Daniel Chen wrote:
I agree, a discussion is definitely warranted.
Iterating off of Jason's e-mail: many services offer academic and
corporate pricing tiers. This could be something we do?
On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 1:05 PM, Turner, Stephen D. (sdt5z)
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I'll second the apprehension about providing free labor to
corporations who can very easily pay for it. And I wouldn't blow
this off as a one-off thing, a "let's just do it this time and
figure it out later if it becomes a problem" -kind of thing. When
word gets out that we're providing training worth big money for
free to any corporation who asks for it, I'd imagine we'll have
lots more Monsantos knocking at our door (and not just global
multibillion dollar corps). I'd suggest some serious discussion
amongst the steering committee and everyone else on this list
about what a policy should look like.
Stephen
-----------------------------------------
Stephen D. Turner, Ph.D.
Bioinformatics Core Director
University of Virginia School of Medicine
bioinformatics.virginia.edu <http://bioinformatics.virginia.edu>
On Mar 4, 2015, at 12:25 PM, Jason Moore <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
This is the first time I've noticed one of the workshops for a
billion dollar corporation. What is SWC's policy on providing
volunteer labor for corporations? I can get behind helping grad
students at universities for free, but this seems very different.
Corporate training is big money. For example, my girlfriend's
place of business just paid $20k for a lousy two day workshop a
couple weeks ago. Seems like this kind of thing would be ideal to
do to fund SWC's more altruistic goals, but I'm not sure that
having volunteers teaching it is necessarily what everyone has in
mind. Not to mention, Monsanto isn't the most liked of companies.
I'd potentially feel ok volunteering for corporate training if I
knew it meant a strong pay off to our non-profit.
That's just a thought. Sounds like something worthy of a board
discussion if it hasn't happened yet. At the last non-profit I
worked at, these topics certainly kept us at the meeting longer
than we'd wished.
Jason
moorepants.info <http://moorepants.info/>
+01 530-601-9791 <tel:530-601-9791>
On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 6:43 AM, Greg Wilson
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi everyone,
We've been approached by Monsanto to run two or even three
workshops side by side on April 20-21 in St Louis. They're
looking for instructors with backgrounds in stats,
genomics/bioinformatics, or both - if you're interested and
available, please add yourself to
https://swcarpentry.etherpad.mozilla.org/instructors-US
<https://swcarpentry.etherpad.mozilla.org/instructors-US>.
They have a lot of scientists who need our skills, so I'm
hopeful that a good first showing will lead to repeat business...
Thanks,
Greg
--
Dr. Greg Wilson | [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
Software Carpentry | http://software-carpentry.org
<http://software-carpentry.org/>
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