As I had previously mentioned, the scheduling of Workshops and finding appropriate instructors to present them, is a 2 edged sword.

One of the dull or bad sides of the schedule sword is when an instructor cancels out a few weeks prior to the class starting.
I’ve only had this happen a few times in the past 10 years and only one that just outright said he had a better offer ($) to shoot a layout in NYC that weekend.
Now I thought long and hard about this, trying to balance his need to make money with, what I call my Trust Factor.

My Trust Factor is calculation of will they do “the right thing” in a situation and it’s a hard one to define and becomes cumulative over time.
“The Right Thing” isn’t always defined in strictly my favor …..
For example, in workshop schedules:
Extenuating circumstance with family or personal life can cause an individual to make an understandable decision to cancel a contract, even if it causes a mess for me to clean up…. The Right Thing!

Waiting several weeks to inform me of the difficulty instead of giving me a warning of the potential disaster really isn’t fair to me or especially to the Students….not really The Right Thing!

If the class tanks because of it…..The Wrong Thing!

Waiting several weeks to inform me of a superior job offer and its ultimate acceptance causing the class to cancel….. The Wrong Thing!

As I said all, it boils down to Trust.

If I can’t trust a teacher to treat my Students, my Assistants and I as equitable human beings that deserve proper consideration, then they probably aren’t worth working with and learning from, no matter how famous or good at their subject they are.

By the way, the guy who canceled due to the job in NYC?
Since the economy was tanking (the last time) and I been given enough time so that I was able to replace him and run a successful class, I tried hiring him the next year.
He gave me the run around while I was setting up the schedule.
By that I mean he would accept a date then call a few days/weeks later and say he couldn’t work that weekend due to such and such coming up, forcing me to find currently scheduled teachers that didn’t mind having their scheduled weekend changed. Successfully changing everybody around and a little while later receiving another call from him with a similar story. (This is another example of doing “The Wrong Thing!”)

Even though he frequently contacts me about teaching a workshop and was a good instructor, I can’t really trust him so He doesn’t work here any more.