Working Online - An Interactive Workshop

Shared at Digital Jam 3.0 Workshop - March 1, 2014

Transcript

1. Working Online An interactive workshop (hopefully) Marcel Morgan @marcelmorgan Kenrick Beckett @kenrick1991 Marlon Williams @m3willams
2. • Passionate about Ruby and all things web • Web Developers crafting web apps for our clients remotely • Pet projects include: ◦ dominoj.com - Play Jamaican dominoes online with friends ◦ currencyja.herokuapp.com - Compare exchange rates accross Jamaican Traders About us
3. About you (Quick Poll) • Any developers here? • Worked online before? • Problem solvers?
4. Who would you hire? 1. party_animal_3022 (Skype) 2. ladys_man451@example.com 3. john.smith@example.com 4. john_smith (Skype)
5. Who would you hire? Profile Pictures
6. Seeking a Ruby dev - Who to hire? 1. Ruby on Rails Expert 2. Ruby, PHP, .NET, Java, Python Expert 3. .NET Expert 4. iOS, Android Developer 5. Musical Instructor
7. 1. Reaches the meeting and is ready at the time of the call. 2. Has an emergency and did not bother to call. 3. Had an emergency and sent a message 15 minutes before asking to reschedule. 4. Reported a slight chance of not being on time upfront. Who would you hire?
8. Time management • Being on time is important - no such thing as Jamaican time • Request or set up Google calendar invites as a great way to avoid timezone mistakes
9. Focus • Good to have a broad understanding of your field • Impossible to specialize in every area of your desired field • You just can’t keep up • Choose wisely and be really good at it
10. Passion • What is your passion? • A lot of frustration if you aren’t passionate about your area.
11. Confidence • How confident are you in your ability to deliver?
12. How much to charge? • What are your operations costing you for a period (say 1 month) • What do others in my community charge for similar experience?
13. Continuous Improvement • Find the resources available to keep abreast of the happenings in the development community you are a part of. • Test your knowledge by taking skills tests on sites like oDesk.com, elance.com, etc...
14. Expectations • Set reasonable expectations which you can exceed. • Don’t set your availability to the maximum. If you can supply 36 hours per week, set your availability to 32 hours at most.
15. Where to start • odesk.com • elance.com Watch video about working online with oDesk http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/23670559
16. Retake Skills tests • You won’t get the best score first time • Retake, retake, retake
17. Networking • Create a LinkedIn profile • Create a Twitter • Github account • Attend Kingston Beta meetups
18. Interested in learning? • tryruby.org • try.github.io • railscast.com • youtube.com (not for music videos only)
19. Questions? startup@codedry.com @codedry