Re: Proposed new policy for Training events

Josh Berkus wrote:
> All,
Sorry to chime in late here..I don't check this list as often as some of
the others.
>
> We're getting some abuse on the training event front, and I'd like to
> pass a new policy:
>
> Frequency: no company may list more than three training events per
> quarter. If the company has more training than that, they are
> encouraged to post links to their own web page schedule.
Okay. I think I proposed this in the past, and the response I got was
that it was legitimate for a company to offer courses in many locations
on many dates, so long as there was a reasonable chance that they would
run the course. In fact, it was a result of that discussion that we
started doing something similar (to be competitive more than anything
else). Our result was 100% of the courses at our NC location running as
advertised (we guarantee them to run anyways), and about 15% of our
non-NC courses running as advertised. We've since (more or less, with
an occasional exception where we see significant demand or are exploring
a new market) discontinued that practice, since I didn't think it had
the value we wanted.

However, that being said, we offer far more than a single administration
course (performance tuning, HA, PostGIS, Administration), and a policy
of no more than 3 events per quarter seems restrictive. We might offer
a HA course twice a year, a Admin course twice a quarter, a postgis
course twice a year and a performance course twice a quarter. A three
events per quarter rule might put us on the cusp of not being able to
list events that we would almost always run.

Furthermore, these are class that actually run - perhaps with only a
couple of people in some cases - but they are being run....
> Content: Training events will include *one paragraph* of descriptive
> content, describing in a factual way what the contents of the training
> is. Hyperbole, competitive messaging, and offers of free gifts are
> prohibited.
This needs to be clarified a bit. Events are split into two parts, a
"Summary" (where I see your rule applying) and "Details" (we use that to
cite some references, post the course content, and additional details,
cancellation policy, etc.). I think your noted policy WRT content makes
sense for the summary, but not for the details. Also, I'm not sure I'm
100% clear on what "competitive messaging" is...is that posting links to
customer references (for example, we link to a review written on Planet
PostgreSQL for our Performance class), using words like "unlike our
competitors", or listing pricing.

Case in point is here:
http://www.postgresql.org/about/event.872
http://www.postgresql.org/about/event.826
http://www.postgresql.org/about/event.867

My contention is that "Detail" is for that - details about the course....
> Currently CertFirst is spamming us with more than 20 training events
> offering a free iPod and containing ALL CAPS and many
> exclamations!!!!!! as well as about 2 pages of text each.
Also, I think events that contain no direct relation to PostgreSQL
should be disallowed. For example a Nagios course, which might monitor
PostgreSQL - but works with lots of other things should not be allowed.

Case in point would be an event like this one, which deals with open
source cartography and MapServer, but seems to have no content related
to PostgreSQL or PostGIS:

http://www.postgresql.org/about/event.867

--
Chander Ganesan
Open Technology Group, Inc.
One Copley Parkway, Suite 210
Morrisville, NC 27560
919-463-0999/877-258-8987
http://www.otg-nc.com