I ran a lunch-time book club at work for groups between 3 and 10 people, covering technical topics like programming languages, version control, and so on. After a management change at the company, I couldn't get budget for books or lunches any more.
So I bought the books and bought the lunches.
The most effective way to learn something thoroughly is to teach it, and I was the facilitator for the book club, leading all the discussions and planning things out. The thousand dollars or so I spent per book, which won me sufficiently motivated study partners depending on me to lead, offered much more value than money spent on typical coursework or conventions.
Never mind the value I was providing for the company (lost on the new management, but I felt good about it nonetheless), spending that money was justifiable solely in terms of creating a maximally stimulating learning environment for myself.
Having run something similar ~5y ago, an added benefit is that you end up with former 'students' at companies throughout the industry.
Specifically, a pattern I saw 5-10 times is:
1. Someone shows up at the meetings, about 3mo after being hired
2. After 2-3 sessions (to see if their serious) I invite them to lunch 1-on-1. I find out that they are really interested in my topic, and do it as maybe 10% of their role, so their manager suggested they check out my group
3. After 6mo, they invite /me/ to lunch to tell me their applying to transfer to join the team I'm on, which does is focused on the topic.
4. After 1wk, my manager tells me that they were rejected. Understandably, the reasons have to stay in the room.
5. After 2mo, they join an equivalent team at another company
6. After 1-3y, in ~50% of cases, they are senior on that team and check to see if I'm interested in a job.
So I bought the books and bought the lunches.
The most effective way to learn something thoroughly is to teach it, and I was the facilitator for the book club, leading all the discussions and planning things out. The thousand dollars or so I spent per book, which won me sufficiently motivated study partners depending on me to lead, offered much more value than money spent on typical coursework or conventions.
Never mind the value I was providing for the company (lost on the new management, but I felt good about it nonetheless), spending that money was justifiable solely in terms of creating a maximally stimulating learning environment for myself.