Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2004 13:43:06 -0700 (PDT) From: "Jeremy C. Reed" <reed@reedmedia.net> To: twig les <twigles@yahoo.com> Cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD training in Phoenix, Arizona in December Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.43.0410161326520.23730-100000@pilchuck.reedmedia.net> In-Reply-To: <20041016202442.50914.qmail@web60405.mail.yahoo.com>
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On Sat, 16 Oct 2004, twig les wrote: > technically BSD training, *nix was taught at a level designed to > let students flow from one flavor to another, with emphasis on > vi, different shells, basic scripting (perl/shell/sed/awk), > security, and generic installs and configs > (./configure....config files...). All in all a very helpful > class at almost no cost. Definitely. Skills should be taught from a generic level. I often hear of SuSE or Debian or Red Hat admins who think they can't admin other Linux boxes! I rarely hear that of *BSD admins though. > As a side note, can anyone post or link to a breakdown of costs > for teaching a class? They all seem to cost around $1500+/week > and I'm not sure why. No accusation here, I just can't imagine > what costs that much, especially if the teacher volunteers or > doesn't want much money. Do small conference rooms really cost > that much? Well, I have organized over 35 workshops and classes. Some examples: - renting computer classroom/lab with projection in Seattle costs $800 per day. - renting a very small meeting room in hotels in Seattle costs around $150 to $450 per day. - renting overhead projection costs around $150 per day. If you choose to use a lab without any computers/etc, then you need to provide computers. Cheap workstations and monitors cost around $450 per student. (Of course, you could go used route.) Moving around computers (even laptops) and other equipment is very time consuming and troublesome. Having a company provide a computer lab with working networking and overhead projection (and extra computers) is definitely a stress- and time-saver. Add on to that any travel/accomodation expenses for instructor. If you don't pay the instructor, then you have to find a volunteer to give up 40 hours of planning, curriculum development and/or curriculum improvement. And then another 40+ hours for just the training. That is a lot of dedicated time in a short amount of time. (In my case, I can't volunteer 80 hours consecutively because I have 7 mouths to feed :) (That doesn't include the 40+ hours dedicated to marketing, discussions with students, follow-up feedback, etc.) I have also taught classes at colleges. College education is a lot cheaper -- but in most cases the classes are spread out over several weeks and even months. This may not be convenient for many students. Colleges (of course) already have the facilities and computers which are used for many purposes, so the cost-per-class is a lot less expensive. In most cases, schools don't pay instructors very much either when you have to consider planning and a lot of travel time. I have heard of a few user groups and individuals that have ran ongoing classes for free. But I think it is pretty rare -- and I think that the free classes are only a couple hours a week or month. You can find free places to teach non-hands-on lectures for a short amount of time, but for most people it is not a good learning method. > > The course details > > are at http://www.pugetsoundtechnology.com/training/freebsd/ . > > And > > discounts are available. Jeremy C. Reed BSD News, BSD tutorials, BSD links http://www.bsdnewsletter.com/
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