I've been working on getting my rebooted PNI Practicum courses ready to go, and I've made several decisions (and changes to my previous plans). If you are interested in taking one of the courses, you might want to hear what has been going on.
TL;DR - A new 4-week Prelude course will be starting on March 3, 2026 -- if I get at least six sign-ups for it. You can't sign up for it at this moment, but you will be able to sign up in another 1-2 weeks. Keep an eye on pnipracticum.com for details.
A platform decision
After reviewing many options, I've decided to use Zoho's TrainerCentral platform to advertise, sell, and deliver the courses. It has the features I want, it's within my price range, and so far I'm finding it pretty easy to use.
A domain decision
The new paid courses will be hosted at a new domain, pnipracticum.com. At the moment the new TrainerCentral "academy" site exists, but is not yet live. I'm now in the process of moving most of my site and course content there.
I plan to keep the open-source version of the courses at cfkurtz.com/pnipracticum. I will simplify that page to include just a brief description of the open-source file downloads (which I am also working to update).
A pricing decision
I have decided to price my courses using the Purchasing Power Parity system. When you look at my course web site (after I finish getting it set up), the price you see will vary based on the country in which your IP address is located.
I am not yet sure what these prices will be (there is a lot to learn about PPP), but depending on where you live, you might be eligible for a course discount of up to 50%. I will be entering these prices into TrainerCentral by hand, so I will enter the 20 or so countries I think are most likely to come up. If you live outside the US and see the US (default) price (instead of a price in your local currency), you can send me an email, and I will add your country to the list.
I am going to have to ask everyone not to abuse this system (because a person could use a VPN to seem to live in a different country than they actually do). Given the nature of my courses, I hope people will respect the request.
Why am I doing this? It's partly because I think it's the right thing to do, but it's also partly because my courses are cohort-based. If I can't find at least six people to take each course, I can't run the course at all. I was thinking of offering last-minute fill-up-the-cohort discounts, but (because of the time commitment) I don't think most people are going to want to take these courses on the spur of the moment. So I think PPP pricing could be a win-win solution for all of us.
I am not able to offer a sliding scale based on individual income at this time. If I get lots of full-price sign-ups, I may be able to offer a sliding scale in the future. I have thought of adding a donation button to help fund some course scholarships, but that will (also) have to wait until I get the courses set up and paying for themselves.
A time-of-day decision
I have been thinking a lot about the time of day for the courses.
In my previous blog post, I said I planned to provide courses at alternating times (1pm and 7pm my time) throughout the year. But I've begun to worry about that approach. Historically, the great majority of my coaching and consulting clients (like 90%) have been located in the Americas and Europe. Classes that start at my 7pm would be best for people in Asia, but they might not fill up enough to run.
People say the best time to plan an international meeting is at 9am New York time. I would love to be able to do that. Sadly, I can't. I have always been a night owl, but more importantly, some of my days start with migraine headaches. You don't want to talk to me on those mornings.
So I have decided to hold all of my course meetings at my 2pm (year-round). That is 11am in California, 8pm in Europe, midnight in Mumbai, and 6am in Sydney. It's at 3am in Singapore and Perth and Shanghai, but it's the best I can do, at least for the time being.
A time-of-week decision
I love talking to people. At the same time, talking to people drains me. Part of what I am offering people in my courses is access to the un-drained version of me. So I need to make sure I can be present and friendly and capable of thought in each course meeting.
To make this possible, I have arranged my courses so that I will never meet with people on more than three days per week, and I will never meet with anyone on Fridays. I think that should preserve enough of my energy to provide a positive course experience for everyone.
The Level I and II courses do include some (optional) one-on-one coaching sessions. I will schedule those calls on the same days as the classes, and never on Friday.
A time-of-year decision
Right now I'm working to get the Prelude (Level 0) course ready for people to take in March (one month from now). I don't know if that course will fill up in time to run, but it's worth a try.
However, I don't think six people will want to take the scheduled Level II (Larger-scale) course in March. It's a 20-week course, with an 8-hour per week time commitment, and I don't think six people will be ready to make a commitment like that at such short notice.
So I've been looking at my schedule to see how I could change the Level II course to give people more time to think about signing up for it. Thinking about that that led me to a new idea.
This new schedule brings January into the picture, which allows me to add one more Level 0 course (in January) and to schedule two Level II courses per year (a "winter" class from January through May, and a "summer" class from June through November).
Note that the summer Level II course has an August gap in which people can either continue to gather stories or take a break. The extra time should help out anyone who is having trouble getting enough stories for their projects.
This new schedule also means that I don't have to get all three courses ready in the next few weeks. I only need to get one (the Prelude) set up and ready to go. I think I can finish that in another week or two. Wish me luck! And send any questions or comments to cfkurtz at cfkurtz dot com.
