I think this is a great idea. I belonged to a similar group in Minneapolis
(as a designer) and it worked really well. We shared office costs (a
beautiful space in an old warehouse building), admin costs (phone,
bookkeeping, copier/fax, etc), and bid on jobs individually and together.
The group lasted about 3 years, and only disbanded when several people (me
included) moved away or changed careers.
And when you get it set up in Phoenix, how about a branch in Tucson?? ;-)
Darcey Spears
Results Direct
www.resultsdirect.com
dspears@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
At 11:16 AM 7/23/00 -0700, you wrote:
I have been tossing an idea around with a few people and I would like to run
it by the group and see if there's any interest. It's directed towards the
freelancers and telecomuters that are currently working from home:
How would you feel about forming a "developer co-op" independent of the user
group? You share office space, bandwidth, utility bills, etc. with other
developers but you continue to do your own thing. It sounds kind of
"hippie-ish" but executed well, I think it would lend several advantages:
1) you have an environment of developers around you to whom you can bounce
questions/ideas
2) you have the ability to bid larger jobs because you can "subcontract"
other developers in the office who are interested and draw upon their
strengths (ie. you need a cfx tag written in C but don't know how, you can
exchange your cfml dev time for it)
3) you eliminate the middleman for bringing business in the door by building
a name for the "development house" and getting work from direct inquiries
that come through referrals and other developers
4) you may find that you work well with a few people and decide to evolve
the relationship beyond the loose affiliation of the co-op into a real
company
5) you can negotiate bulk discounts for various resources
6) you could outsource administrative stuff and have someone handle
insurance, tax, etc freeing developers up to develop.
The whole reason I started thinking about this is that I am entertaining a
job change and I'm either going to take a job which requires I work remotely
or I will do the freelance route. As nice as working from home sounds I've
done it before and there's no substitute for having an office with other
bright people and face-to-face human interaction throughout the day to keep
you sane.
Does anyone else have any interest in this idea? What are some flaws? Does
such a thing already exists or has been tried before?
Sean
(i'm actually on martha's vineyard right now and have comitted to not email
the rest of the week. maybe we can meet after the next meeting if anyone is
interested in discussing)
Sean Tierney
co-founder
Pubcrawl Network, LLC
http://www.pubcrawl.net
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