Appendix 4: history of this opinion piece

2026-09-21: the announcement

This opinion piece started at the NBIS Training Steering Group meeting of 2026-09-21.

The flat course fee was announced in the meeting notes as such:

Online Courses
- Flat fee of 1 000 SEK (administrative costs + technical operation cost)
- Scrap no-show fee

In that meeting, questions were asked by the course leaders.

The course fee did not arise because of the money: NBIS is not in bad shape financially. Instead, the idea is that it will help registered participants to actually show up.

2026-09-22: asking around

I collected the opinion of others from the day after and started developing this opinion piece. The goal was to sharpen my thoughts about this: my idealistic attitude may hinder my ideas, so I needed others to help me see opposing ideas.

2026-09-25: first draft of this opinion piece

It took me a while to get there, but the first draft I liked was ready at this day: it was short and had a clear, undiluted message.