permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

An interesting idea, but I wonder if they'd sponsor the 13 days of a 14-day 
course that aren't about earthworks. I would expect that if industry began 
sponsoring PDCs, their cost would go up to what most industry-sponsored 
courses are, about $200-500 USD per day. PDCs are actually some of the least 
expensive forms of education around. Check prices of any other residential 
course in any field. 

The only industry-sponsored courses I've seen that are inexpensive are those 
for people who have purchased a large piece of equipment or service from that 
industry, like an excavator, or a jet. I got trained on fermentation 
equipment after my former employer bought $80,000 worth of it. But we got the 
mini-course, cuz that was a small sale. When we had to hire a two-person 
training team, it cost $6,000 per day. (hey, I'm in the wrong field!)

The cheapest course I've seen was sponsored by the city of Eugene, Oregon, 
cost $40 (non-residential) and had the classroom donated. Local gov't is 
probably a good tack to try, although they don't have the budgets they used 
to. No one does. Except--hmm. Would Wall Street sponsor PDCs?.

Most PDCs offer work-trades for low-income people. It just costs a lot to run 
a course. (check the archives for details; we've had this conversation 
often). 

Predictably,

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com



On Jan 2, 2011, at 2:22 AM, wenshidi@yahoo.co.uk wrote:

> In order to bring down the cost of PDC courses to more affordable levels, 
> has anybody tried involving permaculture related industry representatives 
> as sponsors?
> 
> I was thinking about having reps of the large excavator companies to 
> introduce all the various kinds of earthworks equipment, in the same way 
> that Bill Mollison does in the PDC manual.   Or perhaps a rep from one of 
> the big geospatial companies to do a session on dumpies, laser levels and 
> surveying tools.
> 
> Are there any other big industries out there that might want to promote 
> their equipment or products to permaculture designers?
> 
> Chris
> 
> 
> 
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