Honorarium Discussion

DMS General
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It’s great to see some Inkscape classes coming back.

For Fusion360 for woodworkers, will it just be a cut diagram or will the toolpaths for CNC router be included or separate class?

Instructors, currently, can only be compensated for 3 classes a month, but I don’t think it’s a large handicap. It just means that more teachers need to step forward and say “Hey, I can do X… would anyone like to learn?” That’s how lasered leather classes evolved around here. Morgan taught the first one that I knew of back in March '16. I took the class, and saw other ways of doing some of the process. Took what I learned and made my own wallet, then a few other things. People kept coming up to me asking how I did it, so I started teaching classes. Any class I start, I let folks know, I’m not what I consider a leather worker. I don’t know all the “right” ways to do stuff. I still take every class I can from our Leather SIG so I can continue learning from folks like @Webdevel and @Lordrook. I learned a lot from Bitta, but my process is different. Then @talkers started teaching laser cut leather classes as well.

Personally getting compensated for 3 classes a month doesn’t handicap us as a Makerspace unless we don’t have other folks stepping up and saying, I may not know everything, but here’s what I do know. As a community we know more the more the community is willing to share what they know.

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2 days is barely enough to develop comfort in the sketch environment and creating/moving objects in the 3d world. I am now fine tuning the projects in the class that will work as exercises. We will be able to output dxf and stl files. I am experimenting with drawings to have build plans. But it becomes a lot for 2 days. CAM really is a full day or 3.

wait. what?
for the last three years, we had 4 laser teachers, and struggled to meet with demand. Since the changes to honorariums in the summer, the classes we can provide has dropped, And we have not had a new teacher emerge.

I have developed over 40 solid classes in 3d design, 2d design, 3d printing, laser (usage and projects), wood working, wood turning, silk screen making and printing, glass work, leather making and more. So for me to teach a regular Thunder Basics class, it would be maybe 2x a year with that rotation.

In your example, Morgan has not taught a class in over 2 years. Are you teaching yours 3 times every month? People are hungry to learn and practice these skills.

Even the 8 on the list you propose would take one teacher to 3 months to teach at 3 a month. and that would be for 6-8 students.

Fusion360: Basics - Intro class
Fusion360: Sketch - Focus on creating sketches including parameters
Fusion360: Bringing it together - Components, Bodies, and assemblies
Fusion360: Designing flat pack furniture for Multicam router.
Fusion360: Turning a 9 sided bowl - Kee’s class that covered toolpaths and gcode for Multicam with registration to flip a piece.

Inkscape: Basics - Intro
Inkscape: Paths - Designing for CNC machines around DMS
Inkscape: Trace - Taking raster images and prepping for laser.

Not being able to provide essential classes allowing members to use tools must be hurting new member retention and contentment.

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To add to this idea that teachers will “emerge”… It takes a lot of work to convince people that they are talented and should share that gift. I have been working on that for 8 years at the MakerSpace. It’s great to see people on this thread that have become teachers:
@Kevin
@benhubel
@FairieCyanide
@apparently_weird
@Holliday
@kyrithia
@dryad2b
@mrhavens
@Jerry_Kassebaum
@Monikat
@Photomancer
@nicksilva
@Lordrook (who started the thread, lol)

But this is not by luck. Committees and members and The Space need to encourage and help development of teachers. As someone involved in most of our committees, this is not common place.

Above is a fantastic list of experts. How are we helping them teach, and teach often? Incentives can be monetary (like the name of the street DMS is on), as well as recognition and expression of gratitude. I need the former. I know others are happy with the latter (and that is great, because we could not afford them at market rates).

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What is the rational for limiting paid classes to three a month per instructor?

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A period where the growth on honorarium became unsustainable. Hit a peak of $37,500 in one month. Basically one third of the intake in dues.

EDIT: We also have several people that made it their job to teach. Not to say that is good or bad but they became gatekeepers for their committee and earned over ~$12,000/year and up.

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I’m not sure that “rational” really applies here. A few months back, we were paying folks enough that our expenses were higher than our income. We went through a couple of squeezes about rates. And, at first it was only 2 paid-by-DMS classes per instructor per month. Our treasurer, @brsims felt this encouraged the committees to dredge up more instructors, to which I say “HA!”. OTOH, it has discouraged those who had beefed up their offerings to the point that they were receiving a paycheck. And, if I wind up teaching 4 classes, then the students have to pay me. I don’t make it a lot, but I do charge.

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When the current board took over from the previous board we found an honorarium system in disarray that was bleeding money. A specific group of teachers were loading the schedule with classes that didn’t fit the honorarium rules and collecting honorarium for it. There are only 3 rules, you have to make something, you have to have 3 people and it has to be an hour and a half long. Between the top earners and the honorarium auditors at the time these rules were being completely disregarded. I can provide you the numbers if you are interested, we are talking 5 figure income in several cases. When we cracked down on this the people involved decided it was a “war on teachers” and actively discouraged new teachers. They were defending their income, not the mission of the charity.

So when someone tells you how great it used to be you need to consider the source. The truth is we had a lot of classes but a huge amount were hands off 30 minute lectures of no value. These people even had a list of names they could sign up to make sure they hit the class minimum so they would get paid even if not enough people showed up.

Now that the spending is under control we have been boosting the number of classes allowed, we started at 2, now allow 3 and hopefully we will be able to continue to increase the amount. These spots are being filled with quality teachers now.

We are an educational charity, we need the classes, but we have an obligation to insure those classes provide educational value to the students, not just financial value to the teachers.

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Think about that for a minute. There are several teachers now privately charging students to be given access to our tools. And some are pocketing the entire amount without anything going back to the committee. So in this case 100% goes to the teacher and nothing for the maintenance of tools, purchase of better tools, etc. This is for classes that the committees have deemed required classes for one reason or another, safety of user or safety of the equipment.
It is no longer the thank you that honorarium was supposed to be. It has come to be the expectation. We must not appreciate our teachers if we aren’t signing over checks, right?
We were not just spending a little bit on honorarium. We were spending 35k in one month.

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Some even signed affidavits for teachers who cheated attendance.

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You can say “Ha!” all you want Beth, but somewhere there’s a viable balance between those who want to give to DMS in the name of its charitable, I believe very important mission, and those who want to take every penny from it they can.

We all have a choice, try to make it better or try to squeeze as much as we can from it. I made my choice and hope and have worked very hard to encourage others to make a similar one.

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So, there is an option where I can make a class an honorarium class, so that money goes to the committee, but I don’t get paid by DMS. That’s the way I’m currently doing 4th+ classes, especially since I’ve got 4 areas that I’m teaching in.

Although – while that increases the available committee funds, it doesn’t bring a dime into DMS, since it’s just a reallocation of funds.

And, anybody who pays attention to DMS monies, even theoretically, knows that a big sum was leaving if our expenses exceeded our income. I didn’t want to bandy about numbers whose exact value I’d forgotten.

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I believe in the honorarium system and have advocated for it since I started at DMS. I taught and still teach a lot of classes myself. The board continually discusses possibilities of raising the cap on classes, that was the intent all along. We decided to do it slowly to ensure it was fiscally responsible and not just jump in with a high number and have to pull it back again.
This was a way better decision to make then having committees get a total of x classes and having to decide what classes were worthy, which was an option discussed (but not liked by) chairs a few months back.
But it does get frustrating hearing how we hate teachers or are unkind to them. In a perfect world we would have a ton of money.

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@Team_Moderators please split the honorarium discussion. Thank you.

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what are we spending these days? The last financial statement reads $4685
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which would indicate only between 46 and 92 classes were honorarium classes depending on whether this number is for the both the teacher and committee portion or only one (compared to a peak of about 300 classes).

A look at the calendar definitely shows how few classes there are. There are two empty Fridays at this moment which use to be unheard of. It’s difficult to actually see on the calendar since so many events are miscategorized as classes. Filtering by class brings up dress rehersals and board meetings. Clearly not classes.

There are people putting on some good classes. I applaud them. It’s just a shame it is not the quantity and breadth of knowledge it once was.

These are obviously the Eventbrite and cash classes. There was never any requirement made that any amount needed to go back to DMS. It was in fact stated once that using Eventbrite meant DMS didn’t have to put any money out so it was seen as a net gain. And so there you go - that “gain” is what’s going back into maintenance.

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I think this is the crux of the reason some people feel DMS is anti-teacher.

Lying on attendence sheets is hurting DMS, no question about it. People doing that need to be sanctioned. So is teaching classes as a lead-magnet that doesn’t show you how to complete a marketing tactic and uses DMS money to fill a personal coaching program. (I have more to say about this, but will leave it at that for now,) Let’s all agree that cheating is bad and should have consequences, including being barred from teaching temporarily or permanently.

But, for those who devote dozens or hundreds of hours to provide training properly, why is paying them honorarium for their legitimate classes really a problem? Why is this viewed as “trying to squeeze as much as we can” from DMS, if nobody else steps up to the plate to teach?

The facts speak for themselves. New teachers haven’t filled the holes left by “super teachers,” who have the skill and time to devote to training multiple classes for honorarium.

If someone has time to devote to teaching enough classes to receive 5-figures of honorarium, you have to ask yourself why they have that time available in the first place.

Some of our super-teachers have health issues that prevent a full time job. Others are caring for special needs children, young children, or elder care. They can provide that time to DMS, and DMS clearly needs them to do so. The honorarium allows them to provide their talent to DMS instead of finding other sources of funding that don’t benefit our members.

Someone mentioned some teachers were receiving $12,000 annually in honorarium. How many of the people objecting to honorarium have jobs that pay more than that? How many get paid less? Is it self-righteous indignation on one end of the spectrum or perhaps jealousy in the other? Let’s look at human nature. It’s bound to be one or the other. I know, teaching at DMS isn’t supposed to be a job, but come on. Who can teach 2 classes a week without it impacting the rest of their lives?

Let’s try putting ourselves into someone else’s shoes instead of digging our heels in to our own opinions.

@Team_Moderators, honorarium is a separate topic from Digital Media class suggestions. Thanks.

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Our MakerSpace is an awesome space that brings people together and provides people a chance to learn new things. But I don’t think of us as a Charity. Sure we are a non-profit, but both non-profits and charities still have to pay employees. And if someone can make a living teaching classes at $50 each (which by the way totally supports the DMS mission) I say good for them!

In order to accomplish our mission as an incredible MakerSpace we need teachers, if we’re not willing to compensate them in some way then all we’ve got is a bunch of tools in a room.

Lets deal with the source of the problem of cheating on attendance and not teaching quality “maker” classes instead of punishing and limiting all teachers.

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Could you please clarify the requirement “you have to make something”? Also, does the “you” mean the instructor, or the participants? I can think of a lot of classes that were previously honorarium eligible (because they are maker related) that wouldn’t meet this definition, particularly the ones that teach how to safely use the equipment.

For instance, I would guess that an 8 hour HAAS class that teaches how to CAM the domino and use the machine controller would meet most people’s definition of a worthy honorarium-eligible class but neither the instructor nor the participants actually make anything in this class.

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We aren’t structured to have employees, since these people are members we have to follow specific procedures to pay them since we don’t provide benefits. We expose ourselves to liability if we have basically full time employees without benefits.

In short, paying people is extremely complicated with a lot of operational overhead that we can’t afford to support. That’s why honorarium is set the way it is.

If someone wants to make a living teaching classes they are free to charge for their class. The issue is that people were putting up classes that weren’t worth paying for and expecting their $50 from us. They needed the money from DMS because no student would pay money for their classes.

People that had valuable classes, woodshop, printmaking, ceramics and others, just switched to charging a fee and continued to offer classes.

The people complaining now are setting up a false narrative to support getting back to the old way that paid them at the cost of the space.

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Tool basics classes have traditionally been covered by Honorarium. There isn’t a strict limit to the number of teachers for a tool so if each teacher teachers 3 and we have more than 1 teacher then we have all the coverage we need. In the case that teachers are limited we have the ability to charge a fee for the class as well.

The issue isn’t tool basics. It was garbage classes like Lance’s social media marketing class where he just walked people through the built in Facebook ad tutorial on his own ads for 30 minutes, or Larry Garcia’s wood burning pen class where you didn’t make anything and we don’t even own the tool, he just told you where to buy it. Or when people like Larry wouldn’t make attendance to get paid so they had a list of a few people that they would always sign up for the class so they could get paid.

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These are quite the slippery slope. By this strict definition instructive classes such as held by Digital Media, Automotive, Electronics, Hatchers, and a few others such as Inkscape, 3d modeling, etc would never be eligible. I mean I’ve yet to see someone build a car from scratch and take it home in an hour and a half.

I know the honorarium auditors have say in what is approved, but the physicality of walking away with something as implied certainly can dissuade some knowledgeable people from teaching.

People pay LOTS of money outside of DMS for demonstrative classes where they view a subject matter expert put on some great demos intended to teach a new technique or art form. The value is in the learning. In fact I hear there are places which after 3-4 years you get a fancy paper and never even build anything. Again the value is in the learning.

My point here is that demonstrative learning should not be excluded AND I know for a fact they are not. I’ve been given honorarium in the past for lectures where I hope knowledge was transferred. All I’m saying is don’t throw up rule #1 constantly as the argument against some teachers. In fact I’ve always advocated that DMS should bring in guest lecturers and subject matter experts and charge for the privilege. We’re getting a pretty good number of woodturners here. Why wouldn’t we bring in a woodturner artist to put on a class/demo. The woodturning clubs do it quite successfully. Granted not every discipline/committee has ‘heroes’ they can bring in but certainly there are several.

Vectric (the makers of VCarve and Aspire) have a huge following. They and a few independants put on seminars across the country where they show how to do cool stuff with the software. People eat it up and are usually sold out. This is usually because a large part of their base is retirees who are hungry for knowledge and who learn quite visually. We could be doing that here.

Anyway, thanks for listening.

----------edit -------------

This makes the point. Anyone who took it still walked away with some knowledge (hopefully). I’ve had discussion with people in the past about the possibility of showing egg carving using a high speed handpiece. Certainly, DMS does not own one. BUT if by showing its usefulness in creative arts, woodshop, glasswork, gun engraving,etc. a committee may choose to get one and spawn a whole new SIG or committee. Simply discouraging demonstrative classes is not they way to go.
image

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