The Freelancers' Show

Panel Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion
01:16 - Setting Work Hours “Do Not Disturb” iPhone feature 06:51 - Making Clients Aware of Boundaries
08:33 - Handling “Emergencies” Deciding How Clients Should Contact You 11:48 - Keeping Chat Logs, Meeting Notes, Recordings, etc. Ecamm Call Recorder for Skype 13:15 - Email
15:58 - When Clients Set Boundaries with You
17:44 - Working with/for Family and/or Friends
24:32 - Setting Boundaries for Working at Home with Family Metal Door Stop Sign Is Daddy on a call? A BusyLight Presence indicator for Lync for my Home Office - Scott Hanselman Messages (iMessage for Mac) Picks Drafts (Eric) Sleeping with Your Business Partner by Becky Stewart-Gross (Eric) Fluid App (Curtis) Postman (Jeff) Shift by Hugh Howey (Ashe) Google Apps (Chuck) Fringe (Chuck) Book Club
Getting Things Done with David Allen! He will join us for an episode to discuss the book on July 30th. The episode will air on August 7th.
Next Week
Less Accounting with Steven Bristol
Transcript
CHUCK: If I ever disappear, it's because I told my Dad that I was moving more than an hour away with his grandchildren. [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] [You're fantastic at code, but do you have an action plan to take it to the next level? The upcoming book, Next Level Freelance, will help you optimize your freelance business for happiness. The book is packed with actionable steps to make more money, case studies, tips to find more clients, and exercises for you to establish your desired lifestyle. Extras include: 9 interviews with freelancers who make great money while enjoying great work-life balance, videos on strategies to find quality subcontractors, and videos on making more free time by outsourcing your daily tasks. Check it out today at nextlevelfreelance.com!] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 69 of The Freelancers' Show! This week on our panel, we have Reuven Lerner. REUVEN: Hello from Chicago! CHUCK: We have Curtis McHale. CURTIS: Hello! CHUCK: Ashe Dryden. ASHE: Hi everyone! CHUCK: Eric Davis. ERIC: Hi! CHUCK: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up! CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. This week, we're going to be talking about "Setting Boundaries" and how to handle that. Have any of you had a project where you tried to set boundaries with a client and then went poorly? ASHE: I have. Definitely with a certain type of client, my biggest boundary that I set with new clients is the hours that I work. There are certain class of clients that believe that people should be available all the time no matter what; no matter if it's emergency or not, they didn't really care for this trekked work hours. CURTIS: Yeah, I think we've all had that. I had a client email me once and then call me at 2 am, and my response was my rate went up based on how annoyed I am because -- [Laughter] CURTIS: I was really annoyed! I actually tell clients that my weekend rate and my evening rate is based on how annoyed I am. [Chuck laughs] ASHE: Nice. CHUCK: I just tell my clients that it's double after 5 or 6 pm, whatever is side, unless I decide to work. In other words, if it's on my terms; but if they call me, yeah. I also tell them I don't have an on-call rate because I won't be on-call. CURTIS: Yeah, fair enough. I had one client that was upset a couple of weeks ago that I wouldn't launch their site at midnight for their whole 10-people a day and I told them that I would for $10,000; if they want me to do it, that was my going rate for midnight launches. CHUCK: Nice.

Panel Ben Lachman (twitter blog) Robert Cantoni (twitter) Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion
01:29 - Ben Lachman and Robert Cantoni Introduction Nice Mohawk 02:26 - Finding Work Dividing Client Communication Handling Marketing and Sales 06:52 - Forming a Partnership Contracts 08:23 - Partnerships vs being on your own Finding work for others 15:39 - Managing larger consultancies
16:18 - Potentially expanding the business
18:33 - Marketing Avenues Referrals/Word-of-mouth 23:02 - Working with other consultancies
24:59 - Ideal vision for the business
29:10 - Advice for someone looking to build a consultancy Pick your projects wisely Picks A/B Testing (Curtis) 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love by Rachel Aaron (Eric) Coursera Public Speaking Course (Ashe) Nairobi Developer School Indiegogo Campaign (Ashe) Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are (Jeff) Patrick Mackenzie: What Product Companies Can Learn From Consulting Companies (Reuven) David Siteman Garland: Create Awesome Online Courses (Chuck) Jefferson's Bourbon (Ben) Matasano Crypto Challenges (Ben) ustwo Pixel Perfect Precision Handbook (Robert) Mike Monteiro: Getting Comfortable With Contracts (Robert) Book Club
Getting Things Done with David Allen! He will join us for an episode to discuss the book on July 30th. The episode will air on August 7th.
Next Week
Setting Boundaries
Transcript
CHUCK: Ashe is our voice of reason. BEN: Great. [Reuven laughs] ASHE: Oh, we're in trouble. [Laughter] ERIC: Can we mute her then? [Laughter] [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] [You're fantastic at code, but do you have an action plan to take it to the next level? The upcoming book, Next Level Freelance, will help you optimize your freelance business for happiness. The book is packed with actionable steps to make more money, case studies, tips to find more clients, and exercises for you to establish your desired lifestyle. Extras include: 9 interviews with freelancers who make great money while enjoying great work-life balance, videos on strategies to find quality subcontractors, and videos on making more free time by outsourcing your daily tasks. Check it out today at nextlevelfreelance.com!] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 68 of The Freelancers' Show! This week on our panel, we have Ashe Dryden. ASHE: Hello from Madison, Wisconsin! CHUCK: Reuven Lerner. REUVEN: Hello there! CHUCK: Curtis McHale. CURTIS: Hey! CHUCK: Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. We also have a couple of special guests! Our first guest is Ben Lachman. BEN: Hello from Athens, Ohio! CHUCK: And we also have Robert Cantoni. ROBERT: Yup! That's my name! Hi, everybody! CHUCK: Why don't you guys introduce yourselves before we get going? BEN: Go for it, Bob! ROBERT: [Laughs] Okay! Ben and I work together, we have a company called "Nice Mohawk Ltd.". We do iOS development and lots of freelancing stuff. We have one app of our own that's sort of out in the store, that's what we do; mostly contract work at this point. CHUCK: You say nice mohawk, and I think bikers. ROBERT: [Laughs] Like motorcycle? CHUCK: Yeah. ROBERT: Motorcycle bikes? CHUCK: Yup. BEN: Not tricycle. ROBERT: Yeah. CHUCK: Not tricycles [laughs]. Sweet. [Robert laughs] CHUCK: Ben, anything you want to add to that? BEN: No! I mean we have -- so I started out on my own. And then a little over a year ago, we started Nice Mohawk together,

Panel Wayne Breitbarth (twitter linkedin) Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion
01:07 - Wayne Breitbarth Introduction The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success by Wayne Breitbarth 01:37 - Importance of LinkedIn
02:39 - Making Connections Advance Search Filtering 03:16 - Handling Random Requests/Spam
04:16 - Finding Others vs Getting Found
07:34 - Profile Advice Catchy Headline Descriptive Summary Establish Credibility List Resources 12:50 - Profiles vs Resumes Attention Span Calls to Action 17:39 - Groups
20:00 - Choosing LinkedIn over other platforms (i.e. Google+)
22:03 - Endorsements
26:06 - Free vs Paid Accounts
28:19 - Getting the most out of LinkedIn Cool Profile Strategic Connections 31:28 - Volunteer Causes and Experiences
34:39 - Profile Pictures
35:53 - Finding and joining good groups
37:38 - Handling Profile Views Finding out how people find you 41:27 - Spending time on LinkedIn
42:29 - Reaching out to others via LinkedIn
43:36 - LinkedIn Third Party Applications LinkedIn App Hootsuite 44:27 - Status Updates
44:48 - Company Pages Picks S5: A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System (Reuven) org-S5 (Reuven) Backups (Reuven) PHPStorm Tutorials (Curtis) My Daily Scrum (Curtis) Scrivener (Eric) Bartender | Mac Menu Bar Item Control (Jeff) Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World by Michael S. Hyatt (Wayne) This Is Your Life Podcast (Chuck) Platform University (Chuck) Next Week
Freelancers Show: Building a Consultancy with Ben Lachman and Robert Cantoni
Transcript [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] [You're fantastic at code, but do you have an action plan to take it to the next level? The upcoming book, Next Level Freelance, will help you optimize your freelance business for happiness. The book is packed with actionable steps to make more money, case studies, tips to find more clients, and exercises for you to establish your desired lifestyle. Extras include: 9 interviews with freelancers who make great money while enjoying great work-life balance, videos on strategies to find quality subcontractors, and videos on making more free time by outsourcing your daily tasks. Check it out today at nextlevelfreelance.com!] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 67 of the Freelancers Show! This week on our panel, we have Reuven Lerner. REUVEN: Hello! CHUCK: Curtis McHale. CURTIS: Good day! CHUCK: Eric Davis. ERIC: Hi! CHUCK: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. This week, we have a special guest and that's Wayne Breitbarth. WAYNE: Hi everybody! CHUCK: Since you haven't been on the show before, do you want to introduce yourself? WAYNE: Sure! My name is Wayne Breitbarth, I'm the author of "The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success" - sort of a self-taught, self-made LinkedIn expert; didn't want anything to do with social media, but now has found a way to actually make a living doing it and just having a blast doing so. CHUCK: Awesome. I've been reading your book, and it's really, really good. And I'm really excited to talk about a lot of the stuff related to LinkedIn. For us as freelancers, I'm a little curious, what do you think the most important part of LinkedIn is for us? WAYNE: I think what we all have to do -- we're all sort of in the game of trying to build our business every single day of the week, right? One of the most important things you got to do is make a lot of connections - the right connections. Secondly, you got to make sure that your profile has got all the critical keywords. I know you are very techy guys, so you probably get that part that many people don't.

Panel David J. Soler (twitter blog) Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion
01:04 - David J. Soler Introduction Relationship Marketing & Sales Podcast davidjsoler.com 01:54 - Building Relationships and Getting Referrals Trust, Likability, Credibility + Value (TLC+V) Handwritten, Personal Notes 13:39 - Trust Integrity Reputation Consistency 23:52 - Unconventional Marketing ‘Wow’ Factor Before, During, and After Items of Value 30:11 - Referrals
32:10 - Meet Your Clients
34:31 - Appreciation and Encouragement
36:37 - Relationships Over Business Picks Thou Shall Prosper: Ten Commandments for Making Money by Rabbi Daniel Lappin (Curtis) Ladda Buttons (Curtis) Freelancing Rules of Thumb (Eric) Apple Developer: for WWDC Videos (Jeff) Mac Pro (Jeff) httpie (Reuven) Reversing PDF Documents (Reuven) Explore It!: Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with Exploratory Testing by Elisabeth Hendrickson (Chuck) The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy (David) Next Week
Freelancers Show: LinkedIn with Wayne Breitbarth
Transcript
DAVID: Are we live on the show? Are we broadcasting...or just setting up? CHUCK: I'm just doing some quick sound checks and then we'll get going... DAVID: Okay, great! CHUCK: Which is just me watching the volume meter while everybody talks. So, go ahead. REUVEN: Ohh! Is that what secretly happens? [laughter] REUVEN: And here I thought you're just trying to get us to be friendly. [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 66 of The Freelancers Show! This week on our panel, we have Curtis McHale. CURTIS: Good morning! CHUCK: Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up! CHUCK: Reuven Lerner is trying to connect. I guess the wiring in Atlantic Ocean got cut; somebody wrong it over or something. I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. This week, we have a special guest and that's David J. Soler. DAVID: Hello everybody! Thanks for having me! CHUCK: No problem. Do you want to introduce yourself really quickly? DAVID: Sure! My name is David J. Soler, I am the host of the Relationship Marketing and Sales Podcast. You can learn more about me at davidjsoler.com. I am here to share and answer new questions that I can that you guys want to ask! CHUCK: Awesome! Now, I know David because we're in the same Mastermind Group, so we talk twice a month and he has helped me with quite a bit of marketing stuff. The thing that really kind of got me excited about getting you on the call besides your podcast, which is awesome, you've had some great guests, too. I think my favorite is the one with David Siteman Garland. DAVID: Yeah, it was blast. He's just a real smart guy, online entrepreneur, and just lot of great helpful tips. I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's been a blast to interview people like him. CHUCK: Yeah. Anyway, you did something that was a little bit kind of outside the box that got me thinking, so I thought we'd bring that on and have you talk to us a little bit about some of the, I guess, less conventional things that you do. What you did was you sent 'Thank You' cards out to everybody in our Mastermind Group. I have to say, I don't usually get Pay-Per-Mail unless it's Pay-Per-Mail that says, "You owe us money." [David chuckles] CHUCK: So, I thought that was interesting! I was just wondering, what other ideas or techniques or ways of coming up with things like that, that we could do in our freelancing businesses to kind of make a  connection? DAVID: Sure, definitely! Well, the thing about it and approach that I'm trying to take you say unconventional, really,

Panel Jevin Maltais (github Quickjack Solutions) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Charles M...

Panel Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion
42:46 - Social Media Panel Activity Levels SaneBox 03:12 - Primary Social Networks Twitter Facebook LinkedIn 04:07 - LinkedIn Recommendations Job Leads Resume @ProBlogger: The Ultimate Guide to Making Money with the Amazon Affiliate Program 10:25 - Twitter Censorship Visibility 16:54 - Facebook Games Facebook Ads Rob Walling: The 5 Minute Guide To Cheap Startup Advertising 22:10 - Social Media Management Apps Tweetbot HootSuite Buffer Instapaper If This Then That (IFTTT) Pinboard 24:57 - Automated Tweeting
27:47 - The benefits and pitfalls of using Twitter Is that Owned Content Worth Anything? - Curtis McHale Building and maintaining relationships 31:45 - Google+ Google+ Communities SEO Benefits Google Authorship 35:15 - Forum Sites Reddit /r/freelance FreelanceSwitch Hacker News Harassment and bullying Paul Graham: What I’ve Learned from Hacker News 43:11 - Membership Sites 5000bc Dynamite Circle Picks HappyCow: Vegetarian Restaurants, Vegan Restaurant, Natural Health Food Stores  (Reuven) Mouseflow (Reuven) Python Module of the Week (Reuven) xkcd: Is It Worth the Time? (Jeff) 78,000 Apply for A One-Way Ticket to Colonize Mars | Singularity Hub (Jeff) Favstar (Ashe) feedly (Ashe) TripIt Pro (Ashe) Chrome Messenger Bag (Curtis) Philips O’Neill Over-Ear Flex Headphones (Curtis) Review - Philips O'Neill The Stretch Headphones - Curtis McHale (Curtis) Ergotron Monitor Stand (Curtis) Authority by Nathan Barry (Chuck) Candy Crush Saga (Chuck) Next Week
Handling Prospects' Poor Technology Choices with Jevin Maltais
Transcript
CHUCK: My daughter put, "My dad's job is cutting the grass," and my son put, "My dad's job is working..." [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] CHUCK: Hey everybody, and welcome to Episode 64 of the Freelancers Show! This week on our panel we have, Curtis McHale. CURTIS: Hello! CHUCK: Reuven Lerner. REUVEN: Hello there! CHUCK: Ashe Dryden. ASHE: Hi there! CHUCK: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. And this week, we're going to be talking about "Social Media" for freelancers. How active are you guys on your social media? ASHE: I'm on a limb here and say I'm probably the most prolific Squidoo-er of all of us. CHUCK: I would guess you're right. [laughter] CURTIS: I'd certainly go into heads down mode, probably once a day or I don't post anything for extended extended periods. CHUCK: Yeah. I put funny odds and ends that people say on Twitter and then I do interact with people on Twitter. So if you tweet at me, then I'll probably reply if you say something that is more interesting than just yes or no. But other than that, I'm really not on there too much. REUVEN: So I'm going to be at the other end of the spectrum from Ashe, and I think I might have not tweet once. I'm starting to get convinced that it's worth doing, but so far, that's like -- once you are sent out a note on Facebook, so in everyone, thanks for all the happy birthday wishes. So if there's anywhere I'm active at all, it's on LinkedIn. But even there, it's pretty moderate. CHUCK: Wow. CURTIS: Yeah, on Facebook, I always checks as my wife were saying happy birthday. So I'm going to get like a million updates in a day, and they all email me because I check it so infrequently that I just have it set to "email me". CHUCK: Yeah, mine set to "email me", and then I use "SaneBox", and SaneBox sorts it all off so I never see them anyway. [laughter] ASHE: Awesome!

Panel Curtis McHale (twitter github blog) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion
00:37 - Reuven Lerner Introduction
01:10 - Curtis McHale Introduction WordPress The Coderpath Podcast 01:57 - Consulting, Tools & Apps fvrb (Curtis’ Ruby Brigade) Billings Pro Ronin Trello Evernote Dropbox Evernote Hello Evernote Skitch Napkin Mailbox IFTTT (If This Then That) 10:21 - Ronin FreshBooks Harvest Harvest Online Invoicing & Time Tracking: Curtis McHale Multiple Currencies Marketcircle: Daylite Complete Review of Daylite 4: Curtis McHale 13:16 - Customer Relationship Management The Trello/Evernote Combo Highrise Salesforce Curtis’ Trello Gist Podio 15:50 - Trello
17:18 - Booking Out Work
18:38 - Consulting in WordPress
21:33 - Getting Leads & Establishing Connections
23:15 - Application Development with WordPress Tom McFarlin 25:51 - Advantages of WordPress Joomla/Mambo Drupal 29:18 - Dealing w/ new WordPress Versions Security Issues Metasploit 34:39 - Resources curtismchale.ca WP Theme Tutorial Become a WordPress Development Professional by Curtis McHale sfndesign.ca Picks IRS Cracks Down on Independent Contractors - What it Means for Your Small Business (Eric)  WordPress Core is Secure - Stop Telling People Otherwise (Eric) One Tab Chrome Extension (Jeff) Arrested Development (Reuven) ridiculous_fish (Reuven) zsh-syntax-highlighting (Reuven) Hanping Chinese Dictionary Pro (Reuven) iOctocat (Chuck) ioctocat on GitHub (Chuck) Kinesis Freestyle Keyboard (Curtis) Unfinished Business Podcast (Curtis) The Trello/Evernote Combo (Curtis) Next Week
Social Media
Transcript [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net.] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to the Freelancers Show Episode 63! This week on our panel we have, Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Jeff Schoolcraft. JEFF: What's up! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. We also have, Reuven Lerner. REUVEN: Hi there! CHUCK: We also have a special guest, and that's Curtis McHale. CURTIS: Hey! CHUCK: So I'm going to have Reuven introduce himself first, and then we'll have Curtis introduce himself. REUVEN: Sure! So I'm a web developer mostly doing Ruby on Rails and Postgres stuff; I've been freelancing since 1995. I would say I divide my time between actual programming and consulting, and then I'm off a lot of training as well; I teach a lot of courses. And I live in Israel, which you might not figure out from my accent. CHUCK: Yeah, we have 3 time zones, 4 time zones represented on the show right now. [Reuven chuckles] CHUCK: And Curtis, you want to introduce yourself? CURTIS: Sure! I'm Curtis McHale. I actually started, I guess many years ago now, doing some frontend Rails and Ruby stuff. But now, I pretty much only do WordPress work. That's what I do; I've been building sites and stuff since 1996, I guess. That's when I started dabbling in it in amidst to have a psychology degree. CHUCK: Yeah, I have to say I remember listening to you and Miles on the Coderpath Podcast. CURTIS: Yeah, that's when I was doing my list of it, like I was saying earlier just before the show, I went to Mountain West and did a bunch of stuff, but I did not come in as frontend Rails so I needed to pay the bills and that's what I did. CHUCK: That makes sense! [Curtis chuckles] CHUCK: So I'm a little curious, we got you on here to talk about WordPress, we also got you on here to talk about your consulting in general, so how do you wind up making that transition? Did you just take the work that was coming in, and that was WordPress? Or, was there more to it than that? CURTIS: Well,

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion
00:53 - Consulting/Giving time away for free
04:59 - Giving away content to generate leads
09:16 - Tier content and pricing
...

Panel Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion
00:44 - Packing
03:15 - Traveling for clients vs conferences
06:38 - Packing cont’d & flying Rick Steves Packing Cube - 3 Set 08:05 - Lodging Staying w/ friends Airbnb Hotels 14:01 - Traveling w/ electronics New Trent iCarrier 12000mAh Dual USB Ports External Battery Pack TP-LINK TL-WR702N Wireless N150 Travel Router StrongVPN 19:51 - Getting through the airport & flying Alaska Airlines Mobile App TripIt Instapaper Dream Essentials Sweet Dreams Contoured Sleep Mask with Earplugs and Carry Pouch 27:15 - Staying off the beaten path
29:38 - Taking care of yourself while traveling
32:43 - Getting around Car rentals Public transportation 37:05 - Finding deals & saving $$$ KAYAK Bing Travel Fare Predictor Travelzoo 40:40 - Traveling within driving distance Picks StrongVPN (Eric) Funding your startup with a "one on / three off" setup (Eric) Lonely Planet (Ashe) Wikitravel (Ashe) Markdown Here (Ashe) Anker Battery Pack (Chuck) D-Link SharePort Go Mobile Companion with Rechargeable Battery (Chuck) D-Link SharePort Go Review (Chuck) DevChat.tv Indiegogo Campaign (Chuck) Next Week
Giving Things Away For Free
Transcript [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 61 of the Freelancers Show! This week on our panel we have, Eric Davis. ERIC: Hello! CHUCK: Ashe Dryden. ASHE: Hello! CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. This week we're going to be talking about "Travelling for Work". This is something that I do frequently and suck at terribly, so I'm a little curious as to what suggestions you guys have for travelling. I think most of my angst comes from like packing and I always wind up forgetting stuff. [laughs] It's just the way it is. I just throw a whole bunch of stuff in the duffle bag, put on my computer stuff in my computer bag, and then curse the TSA in my head the whole way through the airport. ASHE: Ain't that's how a lot of us do it? [laughter] CHUCK: Yeah. So, I know you travel quite a bit, Ashe. ASHE: I do. I travel a lot for conferences. CHUCK: So, what's kind of the biggest thing that makes your life easier when you travel? ASHE: I have a separate bag that I use for travelling, and I actually have like a separate copy of everything that I use in my regular life that goes inside that bag. So like I have a toiletry bag, and my toothbrush, and hairbrush, and everything always stay in there. That way, I never have to remember to pack that stuff because the things that I always tend to forget are my hairbrush and my pajamas - every single time. I'm not entirely sure why, but those are the two things that I always forget. So I try to minimize the damage by trying to keep as much stuff in my like travelling bag as possible. CHUCK: That makes a lot of sense. There I admit that when I went down to New Media Expo -- my wife doesn't listen to the show, so I won't be in trouble -- but she hadn't on a laundry in like two weeks and I had no clean clothes, so I drove down to Las Vegas and I went and bought underwear and socks so I would have clean clothes to wear while I was down there. ASHE: Nice! [Chuck laughs] ASHE: I know a lot of people that when they travel internationally like they'll pack everything very tightly. And then when they're getting ready to leave, they actually throw out their underwear and their socks and I mean that's kind of cheap to replace, so they have room for souvenirs or whatever else they're bringing back. ERIC: Yeah, I've heard people that do that. Like what they'll do, is they'll travel to a place that's kind of cold then pick up a jacket there. And then if they leave,

Panel Ashe Dryden (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion
00:58 - Project Management
02:46 - Project Management Software Pivotal Tracker Redmine Asana 05:26 - Communication and Clarification Discovery and Estimation 09:59 - Agile Methodology Workflow
15:28 - Billing Project Management Time Harvest 18:57 - Managing Internal Projects To-Do Lists Outsourcing Board of Advisors 25:46 - Managing Future Projects and Ideas Getting Things Done by David Allen 28:47 - Book Writing Workflows Picks National Geographic Found (Ashe) Will You Sponsor Me? - Elise Worthy (Ashe) MediaElement.js (Chuck) Hover (Chuck) Next Week
Travel
Transcript
ASHE: Life's a little weird sometimes... [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at bluebox.net] CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 60 of the Freelancers Show! This week on our panel we have, Ashe Dryden. ASHE: Hello! CHUCK: And I'm Charles Max Wood from devchat.tv. We have a few people out at, I think it's MicroConf...I should just look it up so I know the name of the conference. Anyway, they are in Vegas and I think we might have one or two people at RailsConf, or it may just have stuff going on today. So, it's just the two of us! ASHE: Sounds good! [laughs] CHUCK: It feels like you're filling in for Eric! ASHE: Eric can never be replaced... CHUCK: [laughs] Only temporarily, huh? ASHE: Only temporarily. I'm just standing up for you, buddy! CHUCK: [laughs] Awesome. Alright, so this week, I was thinking that we could talk about "Managing Projects", both projects, kind of internal projects I guess, and for clients - client projects. I have to say this is something that I'm really not good at, so I'm hoping that you can impart some wisdom. ASHE: Oh, I'll do my best. I think this is something that a lot of people struggle with. I don't think that many of us come from a Project Management or like any kind of Management background, really. So, it's something that's very new that we don't necessarily have the skills for right off the bat. CHUCK: Yeah. But at the same time, if you've worked for a company on a team, using somebody managing the project, whether they were aware of it or not… ASHE: Yeah. I think that working at a couple of places is definitely given me an idea of what Project Management isn't, which might help to kind of stir in the direction of what Project Management should be. CHUCK: So, you're going to give us an 'anti-definition' then? ASHE: Yeah...I don't know. I've struggled a lot. I think that a lot of people have similar complaints about project management styles or like the kind of stereotype of what a Project Manager is; promising things too soon or promising things without actually running it by the developers. Or, trying to figure out what actual problems are in the project management process instead of just the tools that are involved, because I've seen that one a lot. Where, "Oh, something's not working! Let's just change the project management software that we're using because that must be the problem." [laughter] CHUCK: That's right. It's always the tools. ASHE: Yeah! So, that's definitely not the way that I would go. I'm kind of interested, what are you doing for project management right now for software? CHUCK: I've used, in software projects anyway, I've used Pivotal Tracker; really really like Pivotal Tracker. I've looked at Redmine, and I want to get to know it better mainly because I have people coming to me and asking me to customize it. And so, I wanted to get to know it a little bit better. But for the most part, that's what I'm using. And then for other projects, I've been using Asana lately, which was mentioned on the show by Farnoosh Brock, if you want to go back and look at that. So yeah, that's kind of what I've been doing.