This guide takes you through everything you need to get sorted in order to run a TechNoon course.

If you have any questions or need support, we’d love to chat with you - you can get in touch with questions or to arrange a call via the TechNoon contact form.

Checklist

To run a TechNoon training course - here’s what you need:

  • Material - you have selected, reviewed, and briefly rehearsed the material you plan to run.
  • Room - you have booked a room for the required time for the relevant dates e.g. four Wednesdays in a row
    • Make sure you include time for set-up and tidy-up - e.g. for a 11:30am - 1:30pm TechNoon, we recommend booking your venue from at least 11:15am - 1:45pm.
    • Ensure your room has any facilities you’ll need - such as a big screen for presenting.
  • Attendee Limit - you have decided how many people you can handle
    • Check the maximum capacity of the room you’ve booked
    • You may want one or more helpers to cater for larger numbers. Ideally they’ll be able to help answer simple questions about content.
    • If you have a large group extra organisation will be helpful (see Large Groups).
  • Internal or Open - you have decided whether to make the course internal to your organisation or open to people in multiple organisations (See Running Open Courses)
  • Sign-Up - you have made an on-line sign-up form for attendees.
    • Make it clear on the form that you can only accept applications from attendees willing to commit to attending the entire course.
    • Early on ask if it is OK to get a photo or two for promotional purposes.
  • Wrap-Up
    • Evaluation Survey – We’ve found a physical/in-person evaluation survey gets better engagement than an online form (which people forget to fill out). We’ve provided a suggested survey below.
    • Photos – Make sure you remembered to take some to document your course’s success!

Course Materials

Evaluation Survey (for final session)

1. What should we change?
   * What should we do more of?
   * What should we do less of?
   * What should we add?
2. How much are you already using <topic>?
   * Circle answer on scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (using daily)
   * Area for optional comment
3. Anything else you want to tell us?

Images for Advertising

Running Open Courses

  • Clearly indicate your intended audience. E.g. if your course is intended for people in the workforce, or for students.
  • Include a few details and a link to a website providing all details and also to the digital sign-up form
    • Use the original PyNoon application form as a reference
    • At the top of the form, include:
      • A link to the main site that explains the course format - e.g. technoon.org or an appropriate sub-site like technoon.org/pynoon
      • Descriptive text or images about your course instance
      • Dates and topics
    • A Google form will provide a Spreadsheet of form responses, which you can extend with more details about attendees (e.g. tracking attendance)
  • Share with relevant mailing lists and user groups. E.g. Python NZ mailing list and Slack
    • Encourage experienced people to let colleagues in their workplace know; and to possibly volunteer as helpers
  • Share on social media
    • e.g. LinkedIn, X, mastodon, or wherever makes sense for your audience
    • Use an image appropriate hashtags, e.g. #technoon #pynoon #python
    • This really gets the message out! For example:
      Screenshot of LinkedIn post promoting a PyNoon course
  • Once you have everything above sorted, we’d love to help promote your event! Please let us know the following details via the TechNoon contact form:
    • Course title
    • Names of organisers
    • Dates and times
    • Brief course description
    • Target attendees e.g. beginners, experts, geo-spatial analysts, etc.
    • Location
    • A URL to the application form
    • Maximum number of attendees
    • Venue

Large Groups

  • Helpers - We’ve found 2 - 3 helpers to be enough for approx 40 learners
    • Good to provide brightly coloured lanyards that identify organisers and helpers - ideally with their names
  • Venue
    • Book a meeting room with ample space for the numbers signed up
      • The largest venues can be the hardest to reliably book - sometimes organisations reserve the right (understandably) to cancel your booking if senior executives want to use the room themselves.
      • Ideally have a backup room organised in case your primary booking gets cancelled
    • Power outlets for attendees’ laptops (or most of them)
    • OK to eat lunch in the meeting room
      • To be clear: You don’t need to supply food, but attendees should be allowed to bring their own food from home or any nearby outlets
      • You may want to remind attendees not to bring any food that would be too smelly for a shared space
    • It should be easy to find/access the meeting room (this should be an easier requirement during the day)
    • WiFi - because some corporate network restrictions may interfere with some websites and package installations - check that all material that you intend to use will be accessible from the WiFi
    • Microphone if there is a large number of attendees e.g. a lapel mic for the speaker and a run-around hand mic for questions (helpers can take it to people with questions)
    • Set-Up and Tear-Down
      • Make sure the room is returned to its original state e.g. no lunch crumbs on floor etc - leave the room better than you found it
      • Arrive at least half an hour early for the first sessions to iron out any wrinkles, handle any surprises
    • Feel free to allow the venue sponsor to speak briefly welcoming people or explaining their support for PyNoon
  • Communication / Admin
    • Get set up to send bulk messages to attendees when you need to make announcements
      • If you’re going to use email, make sure you BCC attendees so that you don’t share their email addresses with each other!
      • You may like to set up a Slack or Discord channel for attendees
    • Sign-in/attendance sheet - useful to track attendance and for health and safety
    • You may like to set up a shared email account for all organisers of the course to use

Standard Message Templates

  • We’ve collected a bunch of standard templates for messages that we found ourselves sending frequently.
  • You’ll need to replace the <bracketed> placeholders in each template.
  • Feel free to use these as-is or modify as you wish.

Acknowledgment of acceptance into course

Hi,

Good news - your place in <course name> has been confirmed! Thank you so much for signing up, we're really excited that you and so many others are so keen to learn <topic>!

Here are the next steps:

1. If you can't commit to the full course, now is the time to let us know if you'd like to withdraw to make room for someone who can - we have a waiting list. There will be ways to catch up if you can't make it to every session, but we believe the full course commitment is important for you to really get the most value from the course.
2. If you can commit to the full course, please reply to this email to let us know and help us confirm numbers.
3. <Replace this step with any prep attendees need to perform, this is an example for PyNoon> Please test that the laptop you will be bringing to the course is able to access https://colab.research.google.com/ that we will be using for coding in the course. If you have any issues, please send us an email.
4. We look forward to seeing you for the first session on <date and time of first session>! The venue is <venue info, including how to get there>
5. Your time is valuable, and there's a lot to cover, so we're going to hit the ground running in the first session. Please make sure you're there at 11:30 sharp for the first session - we'll be helping make sure everyone is connected to the WiFi and set up to follow along with the live-coding lessons.

All the best,
<course name> Organisers - <organiser names>

Notification of being added to a waiting list

Dear applicant,

Thank you so much for signing up to <course name>, we're really excited that you and so many others are so keen to learn <topic>!

Unfortunately, we have received more applications than the capacity of the room, so we've had to add you to a waiting list, but we are double checking with everyone whether they are still able to commit to the course in case anyone withdraws. We will get back in touch if a space becomes available before the course starts. If no space becomes available, we will keep you on our mailing list for future courses.

All the best,
<course name> Organisers - <organiser names>

Inviting people to re-engage / catch up if they’ve missed a session

Hi <name>,

There are <count> weeks of <course name> to go.

Don't worry if you have missed one or two sessions. Join us for the final push - the next <count> <day of week>s from <date> to <date>.

You started off intending to complete the course, and we want you to complete the course.
We'll help you complete the course. Let's do this!

If you've fallen behind please reach out to us - we might have some ideas that could help. All the learning resources are available at <course material site> to help you catch up.

See you <day of week>,
<course name> Organisers - <organiser names>

Adding people who have not attended lessons to the waiting list

Hi <name>,

Hope all is well. We haven't heard back from you since we sent you your invite to attend <course name>, and we didn't see you at the first session on <date>. We're assuming that you are no longer available to attend the current course, so we're going to open up your space for someone on the waitlist. If you're still interested in attending <course name>, we will keep you on our mailing list for future courses.

All the best,
<course name> Organisers - <organiser names>