The conclusion is that it's hard to be a freelancer, but rewarding for many reasons. There are a lot of responsibilities that freelancers dislike (sales, marketing, interacting directly with the client) and there may be benefits to collaborating to share the burden, share leads, and work together on projects that would be too large for one person.
Short term, we discussed moving discussion to another platform (outside of groups.drupal.org) to keep the conversation going, so opt in by pinging here or email me directly at david@enjoycreativity. We're also tentatively planning to also meet up in person on a regular basis.
Long term, we'd consider sharing resources, working together, and discussing some sort of official formation.
I was asked to post my notes: https://docs.google.com/a/enjoycreativity.com/document/d/1VjrKdI3wm_CW33....
Freelancers generally don’t like:
• Sales, billing, client management.
Freelancers do like:
• Lifestyle
• Making extra money
• Being able to jump in and work when we want (deciding personal availability a project at a time)
• Working from where you want
• Sharing resources for things like software and space
Solutions (options):
• Simple Directory of Drupal freelancers
◦ National options: savy.com ? drupal freelancer / job finding system
◦ Local options via the tcdrupal website?
• A central group to facilitate connecting projects with talent
◦ Sift through opportunities and match up (on commission)
• A network to refer work to each other (rather than a central repo of referrals)
• A coop / collective / company
◦ Members get benefits (space, resources, etc)
◦ Work together on larger projects under the umbrella of an organization
◦ Legal burden, management (sales and billing), and overall responsibility for projects is on the organization
◦ Other benefits?
Moving forward:
• Grow organically
• “Drupal Fridays” at coco coworking?
Where to start talking?
• Lean on an existing coworking space for space / resources?
• Facebook group where people can post needs and wants.
• Yammer (for talking about work, sort of like facebook)
• Teamwork.com
Tools freelancers use:
• Teamwork.com
◦ Project management
◦ Issue / time tracking
◦ Client messaging
◦ Client management
• Freshbooks.com
◦ Invoicing
◦ Accounting tools
• Niftyquoter.com
◦ Proposal writing
◦ Signing contracts
◦ Once approved, can export data to TeamWork (project tracking) and FreshBooks (invoicing).
• Basecamp
◦ Project management
Comments
Count me in
I couldn't make the session due to a conflict with a session I was involved in -- but count me in. I'm willing to chip in - particularly if there are any hosting needs, etc. involved in it - so for example I'd be willing to host a mailing list, etc.
Also interested in the freelance directory and am interested in working on the possible web site.
Steve Hanson
Cruiskeen Consulting LLC - http://www.cruiskeenconsulting.com
I am interested
Hello,
I would like to be involved as well.
Some feedback
At the moment, I'm more in a position to be hiring freelancers than becoming one myself (though the idea of leaving the 9-5 job does have its attractions). From my point of view, the question I would be asking is how to choose among a pool of potential freelancers. It would be really helpful if a directory of local Drupal freelancers had:
I'll admit that a lot of clients won't be as interested in the Drupal specifics as I am, so the information about specific modules, etc., wouldn't be useful to everyone. But for people who are working on Drupal projects and need to hire some additional help because they have a project that is more than they handle on their own, or they need specialists in a particular area (commerce, CRM, etc.), this could be very useful information to have available in a directory.
Also, don't forget about LinkedIn as a resource, which doesn't seem to have been mentioned so far. It may not have the most feature-filled tools for posting a portfolio, but it is one place that people will go to check out credentials. It would definitely be good to link in both directions (to and from your LinkedIn profile and local Drupal freelancer directory listing).
follow-up to Dale
I like the information aspect of your suggestion -- when looking for help - one is usually looking for a specific skills or maybe just off load some work --
Adding my portfolio to again another site can be very time consuming -- (especially for updating) if the freelancer has a portfolio website, they should be able to include that link rather than have to recreate their information over and over again - even if it is just having thumbnail instances with links (target blank) to the page in their portfolio to learn more about that instance or a way to bring it into the freelancer site. (I find it very difficult to keep all these sites up-to-date with the same info that is on my portfolio site).
I think it is important having that info there, just suggesting to find an easier way if doing it and keeping it up-to-date.
maryann king
http://www.emkayandco.com
Just Thinking
I wonder if there is a way to use RSS feeds for something like this. A freelancer would host a RSS feed on their website with profile information. Then a web site could import profile information from the RSS feed.
Good Direction
That makes me think of the way bl.ocks.org collects examples from public gists on Github. When you push a gist to Github, it can include an index.html file with an example of your code, a README.md with intro documentation and even a thumbnail.png. Bl.ocks.org shows your examples together on their site formatted nicely.
We could create a site that looks for eg. a config.tcdrupal file on github and creates a directory of entries from markdown people have pushed. We could create a directory at the tcdrupal group level instead of the user level.
http://bl.ocks.org/jbeuckm
Great feedback everyone, and
Great feedback everyone, and thanks for your interest.
To keep the conversation focused, lets discuss contractor profile / list specific comments over on Drew's post (https://groups.drupal.org/node/411328) and keep this post specific to organizing some sort of official freelancer group. These are of course related, but distinct.
One interesting factoid not mentioned in my notes was that some people in the session freelance full time and others have day jobs and only do freelance on the side. While this is totally obvious, it brings up an interesting logistical challenge when trying to plan a meetup or collaborate on work. For this group, if we want to meet up in person, we should consider meeting at different times to give people the most opportunity to make it.
--
David Needham
Team Lead of Training at Datadog
Drupal Fridays at Coco
I'm definitely interested to get together semi-regularly if there's enough of us. The price point of Coco makes me leery, but if we could get enough of us together to let Coco offer us a discounted rate, or if we could find a different space, I'd be interested in trying it out.
Coco meet-up
Hi, all--
I'm a bit late to the party, but I want to follow up on the idea of Drupal Fridays at Coco.
I could arrange for a meeting space at Coco where we could talk a bit more about this idea and perhaps find some next steps to take as a group.
If you're interested, email me at tara at sparklingrobots dot com by Friday of this week--if there's enough interest, I'd be happy to host. I can't open it up to more than 5 or 6 people, probably, so first come, first served.
Tara
I'm in
This Friday (tomorrow) would be difficult for me to make, but next week or the following could happen.
I'm In Toooo
I'd be happy to participate. Please, include me if I'm available when you go live.
This Friday might also be difficult, but not impossible for me. The following Friday, I'll be on my way to MidCamp. But, the week after would be great!
QUICK RECAP:
At the TC D'OH (Drupal Open House) we discussed the possibility of organizing a co-working time at CoCo. While, CoCo does require membership (in general) it also is a place where freelancers might network with potential clients.
If I understand correctly, the first time (or two) we might be able to do this with free guest passes (hence the limitation on numbers). If there is sufficient interest, regular participants might need to sign up for CoCo.
In my opinion, this particular co-working time might complement others that do not require CoCo membership and would be only part of the overall "Freelancers Unite" initiative.
:-)
Tim Erickson
Triplo