>From a management perspective, having gone through the same sort of things a few times and knowing places giving conferences aren't going to change, one thing you should attempt to push for is having a standard percentage set aside for training for each staff member.
For example, I often pushed at places that didn't have it to set aside 5-10% of each dev;s salary as a professional development budget over and above their other social charges to the org. Figuring that out t the beginning of the year to have budget room for those sorts of things makes that a lot less of an issue. Also, it acts as a recruitment and retention incentive for corps who generally have to compete (at least in the ruby world) with cooler more fun sounding startups with pool tables, nerf guns and beer fridges. But definitely a good management ju-jitsu move if you're doing that sort of forward planning. I'd also suggest a sit down with staff and figure out where they want to go skills-wise so they can use the budget room you get from that can be applied (with approval) on agreed skills improvement. Also, make sure you ask that budget can be rolled over in case workloads or availability/opportunity for conferences just doesn't pan out. The only problem comes when you have conferences which are way out of whack cost-wise compared to the set budget (or if salaries are low, as they are in the charity sector.). Just an idea. Done that at a few larger, more bureaucratic places and after you've gotten over the initial bunfight over what the percentage for training or set budget room number is, it makes things a lot smoother. YMMV depending on where you are, how budgeting is handled internally and the attitude to training in your org. ciao! Daryl. On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 1:51 PM, Leonard <[email protected]> wrote: > I work for a corporation which means that we generally need to finalise > training budgets for 2012 early in the year (in my case by the end of > March). I'd like to be able to suggest that my team get budget approval to > attend primarily web-focused conferences or workshops during the year. > While it might be tempting to say: "I'd like to attend 3 conferences this > year with ticket prices ranging from 500 - 1000" I actually need to be able > to point at specific events I'd like to attend. > > I have two main problems though: > > 1. I don't know what conferences are on. > 2. I don't know how much (even approximately) they cost. > > Currently my approach is to see what was on last year and guess that there > will be similar events being held this year. For instance Web Directions > have already announced Melbourne for May and Sydney for October and I can > assume that the ticket prices will be about the same. > > Does anyone have any better ideas on how to get good technical training > for me (and my team)? I'd love to encourage my team to learn modern > programming practices and the time spent together at these sort of events > is also beneficial from a team building perspective. If anyone has a simple > page that says what's on, where and how much that would be a huge help > too. If anyone on the list organises private workshops I'd be interested to > hear about them. I could more easily sell an event focused on more generic > topics like UI/UX, Data analysis or security rather than specific topics > like Ruby on Rails (as my team mostly isn't ruby focused). Obviously if > anyone has any better advice on forums to post this in then I'm happy to > learn that too. > > As a general comment to people organising conferences or workshops. If > most corporations are like mine then getting pricing and dates out early in > the year means we can nail down budget approval. If the event is announced > even as late as June it can be a real hassle juggling budget around to get > approval. > > Regards, > Leonard > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rails-oceania/-/4zOJhr2U5bkJ. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en.
