The Freelancers' Show

Panel Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Summer Camp) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Discussion Businesses need a brand Easier to talk about, than to build How to name your business vs. building a brand "Real words and interesting" "Not-real words and compelling" Igor Naming Guide Dictionaries of uncommon words SEO Phonetic ambiguity Individual proprietor vs. teams Selling out, business vs. personal name Gary Vaynerchuk/Wine Library/VaynerMedia Rebranding Selling product vs. selling service Start a personal brand, grow into a company Talk to an attorney Tumble Log Give value to your customers RailsTutorial.org - Book Refactoring Redmine Redmine Tips Blogs (posts) add credibility to your brand Feeding time Open source software to build your brand through added value FasterCSV thoughtbot Rick Olson Form a business entity at least within the tax year of starting freelance work. Picks Stash Tea - Gunpowder Green, Silver Needle White (Eric) WWDC Videos 2012 (Jeff) Inspiring Words of Encouragement Podcast (Chuck) Voting (Chuck) Sunlight Labs (Eric)

Panel Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Summer Camp) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Discussion Blogging Write a Case Study for your client projects Startups Company Benefits Startups attract developers with "new shiny" Lifestyle Starting a Business Sacrifice Silicon Valley Learning from your clients' mistakes Negotiating tactics Kill fees How do you balance between two projects when one pays the bills and one is your passion? Picks Due app (Eric) The perfect smoothie formula (Eric) FreelanceSwitch - Freelance Freedom (Jeff) Freelance Radio (Chuck) Google Reader (Chuck) Instapaper  - iTunes (Chuck) Feeddler (Chuck)

Panel Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Summer Camp) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Discussion Subcontracting programming Assistants Subcontracting design Communication breakdowns oDesk Screening Processes CSS Mac App Development Chop-chop Pair programming Subcontractors talking directly to the clients Desired attributes of a subcontractors Can work remotely without supervision Reliability People you already know Great communication skills Problems that can crop up with delivery You are responsible for your subcontractors' work (including the screw ups) Have a contract Communicating with subcontractors Chiliproject Skitch Skype Email CloudApp Pivotal Tracker Dropbox Balsamiq Mockups AIM/iChat TeamViewer Join.me Screenflow Tracking Subcontracting Time Harvest Freshbooks Billing for the subcontractor's time Hourly with a rate markup Hourly with no markup Hourly under a fixed bid project Passing along subcontractor's invoices included with your invoices Including subcontractor's time on your own invoices Picks Canable (Evan) Presentation on Distraction (Eric) Podcasting A to Z (Chuck) Brother Labeler (Chuck) Book Club
We're reading Get Clients Now and will be talking to C.J. Hayden at the beginning of July.

Panel Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Summer Camp) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Discussion Spare bedroom L-desk Standing desk Ergonomics Get an external monitor and peripherals if a laptop is your primary workstation Mouse and keyboard Monitor stand iCurve by Griffin iMac Open space is nice Geekdesk 30" cinema display apple keyboard apple mouse aeron chair windows in the room 11" macbook air Bose QuietComfort 15 iPhone Tax deduction for having your own space for work Corner desk 4 24" monitors on a mac pro 13" macbook air 8' whiteboard CXO chair by Nightingale Blue Snowball mic on a boom arm iPod on 2x cubicle showerboard whiteboard Mind-mapping Metrics iPad scratch paper monitor arms tax writeoffs for equipment purchases Office Depot document holder Bluetooth full size keyboard Spaces iTerm tmux vim Picks Avery Peel and Stick Dry Erase stickers (Eric) Weekly desk cleaning (Eric) SimplyNoise (Evan) Bose Noise Canceling Headsets (Evan) Batik (Evan) Work harder on yourself than you do on your startup (Jeff) Backup (Jeff) MindMeister (Chuck) iWork (Chuck) Book Club We're reading Get Clients Now by C. J. Hayden. We'll be talking to her at the beginning of July.

Panel Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Summer Camp) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Discussion Charge for almost everything Sometimes the estimate - if you negotiate that Coding Meetings on the phone Are you adding value? Learning new technologies doesn't count unless the client specified that technology Try to only do one risky thing at a time Do the risky stuff first You can discount time if it wasn't well spent Tell your client that you discount time Tell them about time you saved Should we bill for time managing subcontractors? If the task requires a team, then bill for the additional time managing people If the task is delegated to a subcontractor when you would be able to do it all yourself, then don't bill the client Make sure the client understands the terms of hiring you and having subcontractors Don't violate client expectations Do you bill for travel time? Look for opportunities to make the client's life better by coming out and meeting in person Bill for travel time if the travel is obligatory Working on the plane can be a way for billing for travel time Do you bill for invoicing? Don't bill for the cost of doing business Bill for email when it adds value Bill proportionally for lunch meetings or social interactions Assets vs Services (one-time vs recurring) They should pay for materials Recurring expenses (services) should be paid for by the client Don't pay for and expense hosting to the client - Make them sign up Bill for research that adds value Bill for time prototyping the app to get things right Services mean Domains SSL Certificates Monitoring Error Reporting Hosting Code Repository Hosting New Relic Missed calls Be understanding! Varies by the relationship Client smells Compensating time when sick Get enough sleep Picks   Game Dev Story - itunes store (Eric) Ze Frank's A Show - itunes store, website (Evan) The Avengers movie (Evan) Blender 3D (Evan) Blender from Noob to Pro (Evan) Unity 3D book (Evan) Tutorials on the Pixelmator website (Evan) Pixelmator - mac app store (Evan) Equilibrium movie (Jeff) iPad3 Retina Lock Screen (Jeff) Chronomate (Jeff) Lift Off book (Jeff) Working with Unix Processes by Jesse Storimer (Chuck) Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki (Chuck) The Podcast Mastermind (Chuck) Book Club We are reading Get Clients Now by C. J. Hayden and will review it sometime in June.

Panel Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Summer Camp) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Discussion Elance Odesk Start local Be involved in the community User Groups Subcontracting Go to conferences RailsConf Get involved in Open Source projects Screencasts Ruby DCamp Join Mailing List Speaking at Conferences Write an ebook Freelance Switch Blogging Comment on other People's sites Join and participate in forums Podcast List everyone you know and tell them you're freelance Referrals John Jantz - The Referral Engine Michael Port - Book Yourself Solid Build systems around your marketing Set the expectation at the beginning that they will give you referrals Do a retrospective or review Survey your client and if they're happy then ask for referrals Deliver underbudget and early Ask for referrals on milestones 33 touches (Real Estate) Be specific BNI Project Rescue Communicate well Set accurate expectations The quality of your website Make it easy to contact you Put together a well defined persona the represents the market you're trying to reach Talk to other freelancers Talk to local companies that need staff augmentation Never Eat Alone Picks It's not what you read, it's what you ignore (Eric) Cats trying to knock things over in my office (anti-pick) (Evan) CloudApp (Evan) RubyVis (Evan) RubyMotion (Jeff) Worth Every Penny [amazon.com] (Jeff) GitlabHQ (Jeff) Never Eat Alone (Jeff) Doctor Who (Chuck) Users' Groups (Chuck)

Panel Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Summer Camp) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Discussion Developers playing Systems Administrators Automated scripting Chef Puppet Heroku Moonshine Phusion Passenger Apache HTTP server Nginx Server Setup Ongoing Maintenance Engine Yard Chef Recipes CouchDB PuppetLabs Ubuntu Debian apt apt-get CentOS LTS Releases Rails 3.x RailsMachine Rails 4.x is ditching plugins Why are you doing DevOps? Stores your Operational changes in git. Saves you time on more than one server. Copy up a script and then script the login and script run. Puppet in Solo mode Bootstrapping your server Vagrant Testing configuration Nagios Virtualbox Staging - should mirror production Chirk Slicehost Linode Rackspace Cloud Make the client pay for hosting and do the systems administration yourself Amazon EC2 & S3 Memcached Deploy with git Scaling Load Balancers Provisioning a VM PostgreSQL VPS - Virtual Private Server Redundancy Monitoring Sinatra Mail Gem Pingdom Twilio New Relic Airbrake Be Proactive screen Picks Deploying Rails (Eric) Zite (Eric) Prismatic (Evan) Wemux (Evan) Solar Clipper (Jeff) Chronomate (Jeff) Getting Things Done (Chuck) Last Pass (Chuck) Book Club
We'll be reading Get Clients Now  and discussing it on the podcast sometime in June.

Panel Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Summer Camp) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Evan Light (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Discussion All you need is a client Business entity Startups for the Rest of Us Business Insurance iamindependent.com LegalZoom Get a Contract Health Insurance Dave Ramsey ELP's Aflac Group policies for companies SERP 401k Find a CPA and talk to them INGDirect Pay Down Debt Get some savings Disability Insurance The Freelancer's Guide to Money Bob Walsh The Total Money Makeover Financial Peace The Richest Man in Babylon Marketing Start a Blog Pay it Forward Don't oversell your abilities Take a reduced rate if you're not experienced Subcontract to someone who is more experienced Chad Fowler Explain that they'll have to pay for you to learn to do the work Contribute to Open Source Experiment with the code StackOverflow rubypair.com Picks Pick an Open Source project, find a feature request, and build it and give it to the project. (Eric) If you don't know about business or marketing, take a day a month learning. (Eric) cells (Evan) proxylocal (Evan) ToDo by Appigo (Evan) Simply Noise + Sound Blocking headphones by Boze (Evan) The Power of Habit (Jeff) If you're not a Ruby person who is a designer, donate some time to an Open Source project. (Jeff) Startup Marketing (Jeff) Remote pairing (Jeff) 48 days podcast (Chuck) Changelog podcast (Chuck) Mixergy (Chuck) Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me (Chuck)

Panel E. Scott Sweeney, CPA (email 801-756-3394) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Summer Camp) Eric Davis (twitter github blog) Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog) Discussion Why you want a CPA? Accurate Returns Tax Savings Understanding of Tax Code You'll likely wind up paying taxes rather than getting a return. Home Office Deductions Itemizing Your Return Likelihood of getting audited Keep your receipts on every expediture Mileage - Begin odometer reading and ending odometer reading The IRS cannot audit you back 4 year Statute of limitations on fraud is 7 years Tax deadline for 2012 is April 17. Failure to pay penalty Filing an extension avoids the failure to file penalties Officer's salary in an S-Corp or a guaranteed payment in an LLC Wages and salary vs draws and dividends Self employment tax is 13.3% Picks Robbie McDonnell talk on goals (Eric) Freelancing Weekly (Jeff) iOS Biz Weekly (Jeff) Paleo Weekly (Jeff) Freelance Funnel (Jeff) Hootsuite (Chuck) Scott Sweeney CPA (Chuck) Contemporary VA (Chuck) oDesk (Chuck) A good bookkeeper (Scott) Excel (Scott)