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Well that was a fun evening.
Just a quick note to say we’re back from the Tweetup hosted by Sweet Mandarin. An absolute damn fine way to spend an evening: good food, good weather and good company. Lisa and co provided dim sum, a half dozen of us decided to stay for a full meal.
This is a brilliant example of how to use social media to promote your business and get it right. A few messages in the right place, and a genuine interest in people. No high and mighty pretentions, but simple ideas promoted well. I applaud you girls.
One trick they have missed… Sweet Mandarin does a £10 all you can eat Dim Sum at the weekends. I think they should be pushing this more, If the rest of their menu is anything to go by, this is superb value for money. If you’re in Manchester this weekend, drop by and give them a try, you won’t regret it.
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I occasionally make insightful, if somewhat obvious posts to the GeekUp community. One of my most linked to and pointed posts was in response to a common thread: “how to set up a freelancing business”. I formed “Kian’s Rules For Freelancing”, and present them here for your consideration. The old footnotes are recorded with numbers, the new footnotes are recorded with roman numerals.
Kian’s Rules of Freelancing
- Try and hit the ground running.
- The customer is not always right. They are, in many cases wrong.
- The customer is rarely right. Often they’re very wrong.
- The customer is never right. They are always wrong.[i]
- There are approximately 9 usable business hours in a day. Any more, and you’ll kill yourself.
- Those are 9 business hours. Not necessarily 9 hours coding. Some days, you will do bugger all coding.
- That is an average. There may be the occasional “oh shit” race condition which means that there becomes 26 business hours in a day. Remember to balance it out.[ii]
- If you’re working less than nine hours a day, make sure the money is still coming into the pot.
- As Paul Robinson has observed, GeekUp, open-source projects and community are often “business”. Remember to factor that in. [iii]
- Try not to bite off more than you can chew. [iv]
- You are a developer, not a designer. If you need designs, hire a designer.
- You are a developer, not a network engineer. If you need network support, hire a monkey.
- You are a developer, not a 24-hour on-call support service[1]. If you need a 24-hour on-call support service, hire a minion.
- You are a developer, not a one-man army of God. You are not going to single-handedly end poverty, restore world peace and produce cool music[2].As such, if the project looks like it needs an army, consider hiring an army.[v]
Footnotes
[1] Unless you’re stupid enough to sign up for that.
[2] Unless you’re Bono.[3]
[3] Or me.
New Footnotes and Annotations
[i] Usually this boils down to “the customer does not know what they want”. The sign of a good freelancer is the ability to beat the client’s real requirements out of them. A stick is a tax-deductible tool.[vi]
[ii] See the past three weeks of my life for a good example of this.
[iii] When you attend these events as a regular “Joe Blogs”, an employee for something-corp, you treat these events as learning experiences, possibly networking, but generally for fun. When attending these events as a freelancer, yes you’re doing all of the above, but you’re keeping an ear/eye open for new opportunities. That takes energy. Factor it in.
[iv] Refer to One Another As I Have Referred You (refer work to others, and hopefully they will refer back to you)
[v] Projects have costs. A business has to spend money. Spend money to make money. Learn. This. Lesson.
[vi] This is not a slight on businesses. Requirements capture is by its very nature hard.
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I admit that I have been somewhat absent from community offerings for the past few months. The projects that I am currently working on have been a little hectic, with some appropriate last minute deadlines changes.
But
I’m hoping that July is going to be a free month. Completely free to do with as I please. As such, I am planning on taking it easy, pimping for some new work to start in August and catch up with those community events I managed to miss since Christmas.
So the question to you lot is – where would you like to see me over the next month. I can turn up and talk on a topic, or just turn up and be generally awesome. Tell me where you would like to see me over July, and I’ll try and book it in.
Oh and whilst were here, please take a look at this post by The Hodge. He could do with your support.
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Now my new larger easel has finally arrived, I can announce one of my new projects. “Northern Geeks” will be a series of portraits of geeks in the north, showing them in their natural habitat and “at play”. I want to show geeks are people too.
The final images will be put into an exhibition, put online and be made available as a book.
So I need volunteers. If you would like to be part of this project, please send an e-mail to kian@kianryan.co.uk with the subject “Northern Geeks” or comment on this post. Please enclose a small “geek bio”, and what you do for kicks (this can be something tech related or completely different). Sport, gaming, gardening, gerbil farming, anything. I’m looking to shoot and print in July with an aim to exhibition in August/September. If your natural habitat is a company office, please ensure you can gain permission to be photographed there before applying. All volunteers will be given a copy of the book as thanks.
Go on – be a part of something special.
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Last night Cat took me to the Geek Girl Dinner in Manchester. What’s a Geek Girl Dinner? Well most tech events have a heavy male ratio and bias. Geek Girl Dinners (GGDs) aim to change that balance by only allowing boys to attend that are invited by the girls as dates. In a non-poly recognising environment, each girl is allowed to invite one boy.
Discussion was varied last night, ranging from female attitudes in the workplace, to what women bring to the workplace, why on earth does it all matter anyway to problems with the education system and nurturing the geek spirit. The evening was kicked off with a talk by Lesley Allger from BAE Systems. Although I thought the conversation was positive, not everyone agrees.
Food was excellent from the “Old Abbey Inn”, paid for in part by BAE. We were all sent home with “breakfast bags” of tea and marmalade, currently being consumed while I’m writing this post.
Many thanks to Gemma Cameron for organising the evening.
(Apologies for the quality of the photos, Cat will be posting better ones later.)
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Reposted with permission. I believe in this strongly:
If you do one thing tomorrow make sure it’s that you go to vote. I don’t care who you vote for, that’s your choice, I don’t care if you take the ballot paper home to use as loo paper. What I do care is that people turn out, that they register that they’ve turned up to vote and that if they don’t vote for a candidate it’s an active choice rather than
“Don’t trust any of them, can’t be bothered going to the polling station”
Make it an active choice, show these weasels that you’re not disconnected, that you do care, and if you’re anything like me it’s that you don’t care for any of the current bunch of self-serving w*kers.
