On Wed, Mar 04, 2015 at 02:35:24PM -0500, Greg Wilson wrote:
> 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.

The low price seems like it's mostly due to volunteer instructor time
(and previously volunteer admin time, although we're charging for that
now [1]).  Deciding where we want to donate volunteer time is
obviously a personal decision.  Perhaps there are folks who would
donate time to teach at Monsanto (or Harvard?).  However, I'm sure
that if you start paying instructors, you will find more interested
instructors.  This is sort of what Matt was suggesting [2].  Maybe we
just need a formal method for connecting interested hosts with
interested instructors, and letting them carry out these negotations?
Or is becoming a marketplace for matching hosts and paid instructors
not something we're comfortable becoming?  It certainly sounds
complicated to me, unless the SWC involvement is just:

  Monsanto wants to run two or even three workshops side by side on
  April 20-21 in St Louis.  Interested instructors should apply by
  mailing [email protected].

and then letting the host take things from there.

If we stick with the “always volunteer instructors” approach it's
easier to handle more of the administration (and collect the admin fee
:), but it means we might have hosts that don't get volunteer
instructors not having workshops, when they'd probably be happy to
provide some extra instructor incentives.  Maybe we should always try
our usual volunteer matching, and then give hosts a bail button if
they're not getting enough interest.  Then you could post:

  Monsanto wants to run two or even three workshops side by side on
  April 20-21 in St Louis.  They haven't been able to find enough
  volunteer instructors, so they are considering hiring some.
  Interested instructors should apply by mailing [email protected].

Cheers,
Trevor

[1]: 
https://github.com/swcarpentry/board/blob/0a47b4420f012c0665f696ca70241fd30039dd3f/workshops.md#operations
[2]: 
http://lists.software-carpentry.org/pipermail/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org/2015-March/002691.html

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