When Tom and I started the conference one of the things we hated was how other events charge for pre-conference training. Just adding to the price of conferences.
I was talking to Sim the other day and we were talking about the Sunday training and my philosophy that it shouldn’t add to the price of the conference because we want to keep it affordable for those without expense accounts or companies that will pay their way. But then I got to thinking. There’s no reason to not offer both.
There’s plenty of room for Flex 101, intro to AIR for android, etc. but what if we offered something more in-depth, with more prepared materials, etc. Basically regular training you’d get elsewhere. For a small fee. You could still attend the free hands-on sessions, but could also opt in to pay for the paid training.
I’m thinking two paid training sessions, plus 3-4 of our standard hands-n sessions that are included in the registration price.
This type of hybrid pre-conference option opens some interesting doors for the conference. Obviously we’d get a little bump in income which helps keep us going (we’d of course split with the instructor of those courses or something) but it also keeps true to our initial thinking that pre-conference training shouldn’t be an added expense.
What do you think? Would you be interested in paying say $100-$200 for an 8 hour training course on something that you were interested in or needed to learn?