Ideas and plans
We mostly organise workshops which are connected to our exhibitions and projects. Jans and Willem know the exact planning and program and you can ask them what the what needs to be done. Based on that you contact the people involved or you put your research skills to good use and find suitable candidates.
We also offer our 'regular' workshops (for instance, the Aquaponics, Arduino and Processing workshops). For the Arduino workshop you can contact Arjan Scherpenisse. For the Processing workshop Emmanuel Flores. The Aquaponics workshop is hosted by Saro and his girlfriend Els Engel.
Since our program will focus on bio-industry the coming years, lots of mushroom and fungus related workshops will be planned. Nick Verstand and Rosa Kieft are the projectmanagers and they can tell you what needs to be done / arranged.
The social media training is hosted by Minke Havelaar. She's probably going to take care of the production herself and will think of new trainings we can offer (next to the social media strategy training). Minke used to work for Mediamatic as a communications officer. Now she's available as a freelancer. She's highly skilled and super professional. Please ask Jans and Willem about the status and plans for this new set-up. The trainings are organised under the name Komjeook which is a part of Mediamatic foundation. The trainings should be published on this website but also need to be added to our Mediamatic.net homepage. This is pretty complex (you have to migrate the webpage to Mediamatic.net to get it visible there), and migrate it back to Komjeook.org as soon as it's shown on our homepage. Perhaps it's a good idea to see if Driebit can fix this, ask Jans and Willem about this. If they agree you can contact Heleen Emanuel. I will show you how this migration works if necessary if I remember how it worked ;-)
Budgets, fee's, material costs
We have a yearly budget for the workshops. Ask Edwin the bookkeeper and / or Jans about this. Every year we need to do around 25 workshops. Please check the latest status on this with Jans. For every workshop you make a budget. Some examples will be added to this knowledge page as a PDF. Officially you need to add your own hours and the use of the workshop space to this budget. But sometimes we don't do this. Ask Jans what she has in mind for this.
For the regular workshops we pay around approx. € 300 excl. VAT per day. For the social media training the trainer receives approx. € 500 excl. VAT per day. If a workshop is only half a day the trainer receives approx. € 150 excl. VAT per day. Perhaps it's good to reassess the whole workshop budget / fee set-up as some trainers like Maurizio Montalti (Oyster Mushroom workshops) negotiated a different fee and things might change in the near future.
Participants
Almost all of our workshop have a maximum of 20 participants. We go ahead with the workshop if we have at least 10 participants. For the mushroom workshops there is a maximum of 12 participants per workshop due to the limited space in the clean room. At least 6 / 8 people should have signed up to continue with the workshop. But as always, there are exceptions sometimes, so please make sure to check with Jans and Willem what they want. It's their decision to give the 'green light'.
People sign up and pay via the website. For the cheaper workshops people have to pay right away with Ideal, Paypal or creditcard. For the komjeook trainings we do allow people to pay by invoice. This payment option is easily checked on the ticket page. Instructions can be by me given if necessary. (But there are other colleagues here who know how to make tickets).
What happens pretty often is that a workshop will be postponed (either due to lack of participants or illness of a trainer, etc). Always call or mail the participants as soon as possible (calling is favoured as our mails sometimes end up in spam folders). I sometimes also send a message on Facebook, because you can be sure people check that every day (hour or minute ;-). Please make sure people know at least one week before the workshop starts if it will actually happen or not.
I always ask if they want to be moved to the new (often to be discussed / planned) date or prefer a refund. If they want a refund please mail the link of the invoice / ticket to Edwin.
Click here for an example of a link to the ticket / webshop.
If they want to be moved, please make a separate list of names so you can keep track of what's going on. Also, in case of moving them to the new date, connect their profile to the new event and / or ticket. Then you have a pretty accurate overview who's coming and you see the number of participants on the website. It can become messy quite easily so an overview with what you have done (original date of the workshop and the new date) and when you have contacted the participant will help a lot. Also add their e-mail and (if they filled in) their phone number to this overview. I also include a link to their ticket so you know when the participant bought the ticket.
Pricing of workshops, tickets, discount and refunds
All workshops and trainings are 21% VAT!
The social media training and other Komjeook trainings are € 500 excl. VAT (€ 605 incl.) for companies and € 350 excl. VAT (€ 423,50 incl) for freelancers, students, people from cultural organisations and NGO's. We call this 30% discount 'cultuurkorting' (culture discount). Approx. 80% of the participants are eligible for the cultural discount.
Other workshop prices are calculated based on the duration and material costs.
Workshop that take a whole day like the Processing workshop cost € 103,31 excl. VAT (€ 125 incl.) or € 72,31 excl. VAT (€ 87,50 incl.) with culture discount. This is the most common price we use nowadays for one-day workshops. The Aquaponics workshop is a a bit more expensive € 120 excl. VAT and € 84 excl. VAT with culture discount.
The Arduino is an exception, this workshop is half a day but costs the same as the Processing workshop. We do this because it takes more preparation time than the Processing workshops (where people just have to bring their own laptop) and also because Arjan is a little more expensive than the other trainers. It also happens sometimes that participants use some of our small electronics (transistors, resistors, etc.).
The mushroom workshops are very cheap, this is needed because otherwise people will probably not buy tickets. Perhaps it's good to reassess this as well because if we can't rely on funding anymore (which could happen in the near future), we need to be able to break even or make some profit, so the prices need to be raised. For now the 2.5 hour Oyster and magic mushroom workshops costs € 25 and € 50 incl. VAT.
Sometimes we play around a little with the prices. If for instance a very special trainer comes to give a workshop (like Jeremy Bailey), we can raise the price a little. If the trainer lives in Amsterdam and is not a semi-famous person the price can go down a bit. We've been doing the pricing in a more or less intuitive way, it might be good though to fix prices a bit more, especially if we get less funding in coming years.
For now the trainers fee, material costs and how many of our own staff needs to help, play a big role in deciding the prices. In that case all budgets, no matter what type of workshop it is, has to have your hourly rate in there, also the hourly rates of other colleagues which might need to assist (the floor manager, interns and hosts) needs to be calculated and included in the price as well. But also the use of the space and the facilities (which is at least € 500 for a one day workshop). As you can imagine, with the current workshop scenarios we hardly make any profit if we calculate everything on this budget. But we should because this is reality, especially if the funding becomes less. Please check what Jans and Willem want with this.
Planning, PR and communications
Plan as far ahead as you can! Sometimes an unexpected idea pops up in Willems head which leaves you with less time than you think. Make sure to sit down with the PR colleague and asses what needs to be planned and done. Usually we send a mailing to our mailing list and do a few rounds of social media PR. For 'special' workshops we sometimes print flyers and posters. Willem or Rosalie (communications) will let you know if this needs to be done.
We have a deadline of one week before the workshop starts to see if we have enough participants to do the workshop. Some trainers need more time in advance. Always mail or call the participants if a workshop is cancelled or postponed. If the workshop does happen also mail the participants + trainer a week (or at least a couple of days) before the workshop starts with practical information (day, time, address, route, if they need to bring their laptop, if lunch is arranged or D.I.Y. etc).
Important trainers
This list consists of trainers we've worked with a lot in the last two years and whom we all know very well (and are friends of Jans, Willem and / or me). It's always nice to see what they are up to nowadays and perhaps they can come by to give cool workshops.
Arjan Scherpenisse (Arduino / hardware)
Emmanuel Flores (Processing)
Ubi de Feo (Arduino / hardware / From zero to C), gives fantastic full day Arduino workshops but is very busy and might not be available).
Minke Havelaar (Social Media Strategy)
Maurizio Montalti (Mushroom expert)
Tessel Nederbragt (Magic mushroom expert)
Els Engel (Aquaponics / miniponics)
But it's definitely worth a try to Google round a bit and find new inspiring workshops and trainers. Although please discuss this first with Jans and Willem. Perhaps they have different plans for the workshop future.
Build-up, hosts, cleaning
Check what the trainer needs (beamer, screen, sound, laptop, other resources) how they want to tables and chairs to be set-up, if they need other materials and if we need to arrange that or not. Always build up (if possible) the day before. You can ask Joeri to help or interns. Joeri is handy with image and sounds, most interns are not. Also make sure that Joeri plans a host or intern to be around the workshop in case there are coffee breaks. After the workshop everything needs to be cleaned. Joeri knows where all the stuff is (tables, chairs, equipment, etc).
Food and drinks
Drinks are free, after workshop drinks have a limit though (1 or 2 max.). Lunch is only arranged for the social media training. With the other workshops we always communicate that they have to bring their own lunch or go out for lunch somewhere. For the social media trainings all drinks and lunch are free.
Yearly overview
Keep track of the workshops you organise during the year and only write down the workshops that actually happened. Please include the date and how many participants joined the workshops. We need the overview for our yearly financial report.