I've done a number of 1 day/weekend courses this year as much as anything to get back into serious photgraphy after a 20yr sabatical (you'll have noticed I'm a new member) and as a weekend break/holiday substitute. I'm booked on my first the Experience course (Colour Management) later this year, so picked this thread up.
It's been an interesting time as whilist I have attended, organised and taught dozens of courses, I've never attended what I'll call a consumer courses, i.e. ones you pay for yourself, as opposed to your employer, who probably also picks up the hotel bill! So I thought I might bore you all with a few thoughts ....
The one thing I will say is they are a lot better value for money than many of the "professional" courses I've attended not to mention more than a few I've taught!
Getting to this value point means that some strict budgeting is needed, as £150/175 per attendee day can soon get eaten up (literally at lunchtime). The two biggest problems I've noticed are a) too many attendees and b)too wide a range of experience .... My last weekend course was a, lively, interactive course with 14 attendees that was "Very Good/Excellent" but with say 8/10 would have been absolutely stunning, but £320 would have become £500, would I have booked? having done it, absolutely, but without the 20:20 hindsight, unlikely. To give you a point of comparison, my company would never run a course with more than 6/8 delegates (thats the posh term) or charge less than £600 a delegate/day, although you will get a very nice lunch, lots of handouts & manuals etc.
So to make these courses affordable for normal people means higher numbers, which in turn means wider experience levels and out of the way locations ..... however and this is the key point of this ramble the content/tuition should be the same high standard!
I'll maybe make a few notes on the courses I done and start a general course review thread, anybody got any Photoshop course recommendations?
Frank
PS I have some sympathy for Brian on the forum front, although I think he's wrong, especially given Talk Photography at least seems to be populated sane intelligent people, obviously I'm a member, as I've had the odd run in with "experts" on forums the most memorable exchange being bought to a close when it was pointed out I had actually designed the device in question and therefore didn't need a lecture on how it "really" worked!