For one, there are expert users for the software taught at these courses. Often, the software developers

know these persons, and it would be great if they could nominate at least one or two persons who could

teach in their place, having gender balance and (age) diversity in mind.

I would say that in many respects an expert user is a better tutor than a developer on many occasions, in addition to any benefits to diversity - they are more likely to be able to see things from the user’s perspective (in my opinion, as a developer)

Sometimes it is necessary to debug / fix things in situ, sometimes weird things happen which only the developer can explain and also - I feel strongly - that developers _should_ interact directly with users both expert and novice otherwise we will never get feedback about the software and make improvements. Without seeing how people use the software - and how experts recommend using it - we will never learn ourselves! It also gives a chance to improve the knowledge of the expert users, since they themselves may be out of date

So - sadly for the environment and funding agencies - I can see excellent arguments for *both* expert users and developers to be attending the workshops - which would also provide opportunities for early career scientists - from any group - to get teaching experience as well as helping to train a cadre of expert users to help with workshops.

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