By upbringinging, I'm a Londoner - but we don't offer public courses in London. Why not?

London is an expensive location in which to have an office; were we to offer public courses there, the prices would have to be higher that we charge at Melksham in Wiltshire, and the facilities would have to be much more restricted. Unless we were very lucky indeed, I'm sure a London location would be much noisier, and I know that trainee's overnight costs to stay in the area would double or treble.

For the majority of our customers, our current location works very well indeed. For people who don't live in London, we're easy to get to with good public transport and road links, and there are plenty of places to stay at a reasonable price within a mile or two. For Londoners, it's a chance to get away to study, and to NOT have an hour's commute on each end of the day to dull their ability to concentrate on what is probably going to be quite an intensive course.

There are two situations where we're told that we don't get people's business because we don't have a London centre. The first of these is for London based trainees who need to get home by a specific time due to family responsibilities; I really feel for such people, but even if we had a London course on offer, chances are that they would be arriving late and/or leaving early anyway unless our venue happened to be exactly right. The second situation is for overseas visitors who want to combine a course with sightseeing and / or visiting friends and family who live in London. Our strong advise to such people is to separate the business and pleasure parts of their visit - to put aside the days of their course just for learning, and to spend a few other days just visiting.

I'm not saying "never", but I would need a lot of convincing to run public London courses. It seems to me that the main reasons that people ask for such courses are nothing to do with the course itself, and that in effect they're looking for a less good product at a higher price, primarily to provide them with something that suits them personally at the expense of a less good learning experience.

[As an aside - private courses at customer's offices in London are a different matter. We can and do provide such courses, and if you have 4 or more trainees needing the same course at the same time, it will work out lower cost over all. There are sample quotations for such courses on this site.]

(written 2005-01-07, updated 2006-06-05)

 G300 - Well House Consultants - Public Courses
  [181] Maximum number of trainees on a course - (2005-01-18)
  [387] Training course plans for 2006 - (2005-07-23)
  [646] PHP - London course, Melksham Course, Evening course - (2006-03-14)
  [845] Course scheduling and Geekmas - are they traditions yet? - (2006-08-26)
  [933] Course Joining package - updated - (2006-11-20)
  [1035] Longer hours and better value courses - (2007-01-15)
  [1414] What we teach - expained for the non-technical - (2007-10-28)
  [1420] The Learning Perl crew, October 2007 - (2007-11-03)
  [1565] Languages compared - based on developer community size - (2008-03-05)
  [1615] PHP training courses every month - (2008-04-18)
  [1693] July to December 2008 - Open Source training schedule - (2008-07-01)
  [1751] Public Training Course Dates until July 2009 - (2008-08-13)
  [1836] Next in the sequence - courses next year (2009) - (2008-10-12)
  [1857] November and December Public Course Schedule - (2008-10-27)
  [1929] 2009 - Hotel, Meeting, Training Course prices - (2008-12-07)
  [1968] Review of 2008 - (2008-12-31)
  [2048] Learning to program in PHP, Python, Java or Lua ... - (2009-02-19)
  [2332] Formation, des langages Open Source - (2009-08-09)
  [2333] Formaci[83][c2]ón, de los lenguajes de c[83][c2]ódigo abierto - (2009-08-09)
  [2334] Formazione, Open Source computer lingue - (2009-08-09)
  [2335] Ausbildung, die Open-Source-Sprachen - (2009-08-09)
  [2336] Forma[83][c2]ç[83][c2]ão, Open Source computador l[83][c2]ínguas - (2009-08-09)
  [2337] Opleiding, Open Source computertalen - (2009-08-09)
  [2338] Uddannelse, Open Source computer sprog - (2009-08-09)
  [2339] Oppl[83][c2]æring, Open Source datamaskinen spr[83][c2]åk - (2009-08-09)
  [2340] ldning, Open Source dator spr[83][c2]åk - (2009-08-09)
  [2341] Koulutus, Open Source tietokone kielill[83][c2]ä - (2009-08-09)
  [2558] Happy new decade - and course and hotel prices for 2010 - (2010-01-01)
  [2736] Perl Course FAQ - (2010-04-23)
  [2839] Software versions used - June 2010 - (2010-06-30)
  [2881] Tailoring of courses to meet customers needs - how it works - (2010-07-21)
  [2927] Announcing 2011 Open Source Training courses - dates and prices - (2010-08-18)
  [2928] Public (scheduled) or private course? Book direct, or through a third party? - (2010-08-19)
  [2942] Open Source Programming - Training Course Schedule - (2010-08-31)
  [2965] Testimonials - Well House Consultants Open Source courses - (2010-09-21)
  [3021] Courses for late 2010 and early 2011 - (2010-10-30)
  [3071] Well House Price list, January to March 2011 - (2010-11-25)
  [3074] Running a course ... what if the tutor isn't well? - (2010-11-29)
  [3078] Royal Wedding. How William and Catherine have changed our schedule - (2010-12-02)
  [3129] Extra courses - C and C++ - (2011-01-12)
  [3160] Extra courses - Advanced PHP, MySQL and Lua - (2011-02-07)
  [3205] Open Source (Public) courses - PHP, Tcl, SQL, Python, C and C++ in Melksham, Wiltshire, UK - (2011-03-18)
  [3219] How do I become a Linux System Administrator? - (2011-03-28)
  [3358] Upcoming Programming courses ... High Summer, 2011 - (2011-07-15)
  [3365] Turning bright delegates into bright and knowledgable ones - (2011-07-21)
  [3401] Open Source Training Schedule - learn a programming language - in Autumn 2011 or 2012 - (2011-08-20)
  [3528] December courses - PHP, Python, Perl - and a weekend Lua course - (2011-11-24)
  [3559] Well House Consultants - Open Source Programming Courses for 2012 - (2011-12-21)
  [3573] New in Java 7 - and why we are not running public Java 7 courses - (2012-01-08)
  [3637] April, May and June 2012 - Public Open Source Programming Courses - (2012-03-04)
  [3823] Know Python or PHP? Want to learn Perl too? - (2012-07-31)
  [3829] Training courses - rest of 2012, 2013 and January 2014 - (2012-08-06)
  [3876] October to December 2012 - Public Courses - (2012-09-30)
  [3903] Python Programming class for delegates who have already self-taught the basics - (2012-10-25)
  [3911] How well do you know Perl and / or Python? - (2012-11-04)
  [3924] The bedrooms at Well House Manor - (2012-11-16)
  [3964] What is coming up from Well House in 2013 - public Open Source / IT courses. - (2012-12-28)
  [3983] Upcoming courses at Well House Manor - Ruby, Python, Perl - (2013-01-19)
  [4015] Upcoming courses and availabiity - (2013-02-22)
  [4172] Public courses - Python, PHP, Perl, Ruby, Lua, Tcl, C and C++ - autumn 2013 and through 2014 - (2013-09-13)
  [4197] Python and Tcl courses, November, UK (Melksham) ... just a few places left - (2013-10-23)
  [4230] Well House Consultants - course prices for 2014 - (2013-12-26)
  [4279] Upcoming public courses from Well House Consultants - (2014-05-31)
  [4300] Public courses - Autumn 2014 and 2015 - (2014-09-19)
  [4358] A brilliant finish to 2014 training and business guests, and a look to 2015 - (2014-12-20)
  [4375] Final examples for 2014 - and a look at our 2015 training course options - (2014-12-31)
  [4408] Additional Python courses added to our schedule - (2015-01-29)
  [4416] Challenging the IT course business model - (2015-02-05)
  [4434] Public training courses - upcoming dates - (2015-02-21)
  [4519] Course Schedule - October 2015 to June 2016 - (2015-09-27)
  [4564] Perl, PHP, Python, Lua, Tcl, C++, Ruby - final public courses for 2015 - (2015-10-30)
  [4689] Training Course schedule for summer and autumn 2016 - (2016-05-30)
  [4705] Course dates - from October 2016 to December 2017 - (2016-09-25)
  [4739] A year of changes for Lisa and Graham Ellis, and Well House - (2017-05-27)
  [4751] Final day of training at Well House Manor - Python, Lua, Tcl and C/C++ continue at The Spa, Melksham - (2017-06-30)
  [4769] Python, Tcl, Lua and other Open Source programming courses for 2018 - (2017-12-31)

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