Workshop Instructor Guidelines

Guidelines For a Good Workshop at HackRVA

• Workshops should be a hands-on event (lecture-only style doesn't work well - if you want to give a talk, cool - that's different though.
• Workshops should have something started (preferably completed) by the end.
• Workshops seem to do best around 2-3 hours.
• Workshops tend to be on Saturday or Sunday from/between 10am-1pm (they can start earlier or alter, but can't go beyond 1pm on weekends - those are freehack times). Weeknights can also work.
• Limit the number of attendees to a reasonable amount. About 10 seems to be an upper limit for most things.
• Consider tool limitations as well - wood working tends to only be 5 people because we don't have duplicates of most wood tools.
• HackRVA will cover the cost of materials and experienced people can help decide a price on the class.
• A more experience member will help you setup the event on meetup.com. It's not hard, but doesn't hurt.
• Be clear and bounded on what you're going to do in your description on meetup as well as the workshop itself.
• Drop some good links in your meetup.com event for people to get a little pre-workshop knowledge.
• Specify clearly on Meetup any software that needs to be pre-loaded on the students' computers, with links, to save time on installations (unless installing is tricky or part of the class.)
• We don't pay people for doing workshops - its a part of being an outstanding member of our community. Free is best for our goals.

These are all just guidelines - some we pretty much always follow, but we're open to experimentation. If you have a unique idea, let someone at HackRVA know, and we can probably work out something.