Re: marketing a perl class

At 01:52 PM 3/20/01 -0500, Uri Guttman wrote:
>i know a sun guy (in colorado) that was reviewing the sun perl class
>notes. he found at least one mistake and it sounded like they were not as
>sharp about it as they could be. sun is not a known perl education house
>but they have clout in the tech market in general. i don't consider what
>they offer as direct competition.

Welcome to the world of market analysis, Uri.  Next time I see you I expect 
you to be wearing a tie, and it better match the Bermuda shorts  :-)

>and their 2 days for $895 vs. damian (an acknowledged excellent teacher
>and expert in this subject) for 2 days @ $999 does not seem out of range
>at all.

No, but as others have said, 50 is too many people.  Damian may be thinking 
of lecture-style teaching where a top-notch university instructor can 
handle a hundred students because they do not have to pause to think to 
answer a question.  However, a university instructor can also tell a 
student, "Good question, why don't you research the topic and have a paper 
on my desk next Tuesday?" :-)

Market is everything.  If your advertising reaches people who have heard of 
Perl but not Damian (I feel sure there are some), your name appeal is less 
than Sun's.  Such people also expect much more hand-holding than the 
average university student.  Among the set of people who know what Damian 
is worth and are not so advanced that there's no point in attending the 
class, you are competing with TPC and YAPC as Elaine pointed out, since 
these people know about both events.

The price seems a little high for a class that isn't hands-on though - it 
isn't, right?  I don't have the earlier part of the thread with me.  A 
recent XML magazine listing a dozen companies showed most of the 2-day 
classes aroung $800, but most were hands-on IIRC.
--
Peter Scott
Pacific Systems Design Technologies