The message isn't portable if you think the message is "use your office to do workshops".
I don't think that's the message here.
I don't think that's the message here.
Sure, you could, but eugh.
To me, it shows that the you are doing everything you can to wring maximum profit out of your existing infrastructure rather than concentrating on improving your core product. It has the same feel as a hot experimental band deciding to license their songs for fast-food commercials --- perhaps a good choice financially, but potentially bad for your image. It has a smell of desperation and greed.
As to the 'scammy' part, I'm guessing[1] that not many people are paying for these sessions of out pocket. Rather, they convince their employer to pay, and that it's worth it. This presents a conflict of interest if the turns out to be not worth the money. When your boss asks you if the company's $1000 was well spent, and it was your idea to go, one might feel compelled to say 'yes' and even to go again the following year regardless of any price increases.
This said, we'll probably be considering such strategies in the future. I have a food business, and while there is no way we could charge $1000/seat, there probably are some things we could do to boost the bottom line.
[1] Jason responds below to point out that most of they are paying directly. I'm surprised, but presume he's right!
The majority of the people who attend our workshop do pay out of their own pockets. They are often individual entrepreneurs, business owners, or independent designers/programmers who are looking to learn what we have to teach. Anonymous post-workshop surveys have shown that people feel like $1000 is not only a good deal, but a bargain.
Sure, some people will give workshops primarily to make money. However, many will also give workshops for the experience of teaching. I have given trainings/workshops a few times and I've found it pretty satisfying to look for the best way to present things so that your audience "gets it" and goes out knowledgeable about the subject at hand. (it was particularly satisfying the very first time, two months after starting at my first job, feeling like I've been dropped off in there, ending realizing that I was indeed able to give that training after all :))
The thing is once you decide to give a workshop, you'll likely charge for it... and the price will be decided by the market somehow.
So naturally, you're going to consider doing them in the future.
ka-ploooie
There goes my brain.
I love making a great product, but hate the constant pressure to compromise my ideals to stay afloat. Every day I keep this business going, I fear that I'm turning into someone that I don't want to be, that I can't respect.
But maybe my ideals are wrong, maybe workshops are win-win, maybe we need to consider them even if I don't personally care for them. They're certainly better than some other options!
I also don't really hold it against bands when they 'sell out' --- they know their situation better than I do. :)
Again: my head is exploding over this. Exactly what part of getting interested people in a room and talking to them seems scammy to you? And: if you're creating value, why is it wrong to ask for money for it?
One could certainly argue that the 'market' has shown it feels otherwise, but the market also has proven susceptible to Scientology and multi-level-marketing. I guess I fear that at the price being charged the audience must have expectations that can't possibly be met.
Perhaps my problems are simply my false impressions of 'value', which may be out of sync with reality. But based on the rates of good college courses, for a workshop such as yours, I could probably rationalize $100-$300 per person. Is there price at which you'd start to feel uneasy, even if some portion of the market was still willing to pay? $1000? $10000? $100000? Or relatedly, why didn't you charge?
ps. I don't mean to imply that Jason is not giving a top quality workshop. I have a similar feelings toward the Ted Conference charging $6000 a ticket and toward top colleges charging $50000 a year. It's not the quality I'm questioning, but the 'value'.
I mean, if I can't charge for the workshop, my primary aim is self-promotion, right? is that more or less scummy?
(now, speaking as someone who /has/ given free workshops to nerds, you have to be very careful about that self-promotion. Giving an actual sales pitch at a LUG is about the quickest way I know to get a bad reputation. Much worse than giving a technical presentation and doing it badly, or even doing a technical presentation and revealing incompetence.)
It's possible that I'm just not a very good free-market capitalist. For example, while I want prices to reflect demand, I get uncomfortable at what I feel are extremes. What's a fair price for a drug being sold to someone with an otherwise terminal disease? Does this change with the actual effectiveness of the drug, or just on the 'buyers' belief in the effectiveness?
In a commodity market, nobody can charge much more than the cost of production or else you get competition undercutting you. Of course, nearly everyone puts a whole lot of effort into convincing customers they are not in a commodity market.
Personally, I'm also much more comfortable in commodity markets as well... and in my space, because everyone else is trying so hard not to be a commodity, this isn't as hard as you'd think.
But yeah, lots of people are offended when you charge more than a reasonable margin over the cost of production, as you would if it were a commodity. But you know what? nearly all software companies don't want those people as customers, simply because if you apply the commodity model of capitalism to software, you get open-source software.
the thing is, companies like 37 signals, I don't think, care that they offend people who expect to pay commodity prices. Most businesses want customers who are willing to pay a premium for a premium product.
Now, if I were to run a workshop, I'd be very concerned, because my customers are people who want to pay commodity prices; people who would be offended by large profit margins.
Some people say those are bad customers to have; I mean, if I can't stay ahead of the crowd price wise, I'll sink pretty fast. On the other hand, serving this market is much easier (well, for me, anyhow) than serving the 'premium' market. It's a market I understand, though, and one that is under served.
Can anyone here even point to Ogaki on a map? Do you know how not-very-hard it is to be the most famous developer in a particular technology in Ogaki?
At the local tech incubator, we also put on weekly training events for things like software security, taught by people much less accomplished than anybody on Thomas' team, and we could still pack a room.