OnSavvy Blog

Answer the following question: Why has Savvy been so quiet?  

a) They've given up and stopped working on it

b) They've sold it off and the new owners are useless

c) They've been abducted by aliens 

d) None of the above <<< CORRECT ANSWER

Far from giving up or selling out, we've been hard at work in the background trying to improve the service. The current version of the Savvy opened some incredible doors and gave us fantastic opportunities for talking to the developer community as well as small businesses who hire specialist contract developers.

We learned a lot and we are now even more excited about the potential of what we're doing.

So what have we been up to?

1. Talking to tech freelancers and developers and learning about their real needs.

2. Talking to small businesses and agencies and discovering their pain in hiring and managing relationships with tech specialists.

3. Redesigning and rebuilding Savvy, focusing on making it so easy for freelance/contract tech specialists and small businesses to find each other and to manage those relationships. 

We're starting with one key element: data.

We, especially those of us who work and live online, live in a data-rich and highly connected environment. Yet it is surprising how very little of this has been exploited when it comes to finding work and building a career. I mean, we still have to update our profiles on LinkedIn like a traditional CV. A practice that is 500 years old. Really? Come on!

When we want to find out about someone, the CV is the least reliable source of info there is. The first thing most of us do when researching a person is to Google their name (plus a few additional keywords to narrow the search).

We do this because our online footprints are richer sources of information. And, they are the most up to date!

The problem is that it is very unstructured. There is a missing link between our public data and its use as an automated source of professional reputation: curation.

And this is our first major improvement to Savvy: curation of your public online footprint as a better alternative to the traditional manually updated CV.

We are starting by allowing you to connect to some popular services where you build your reputation, like Github. 

And just as importantly, we want to make sure that you control your data. From data that goes into your profile to data that only exist in the database used for introducing you to new projects - you control it completely. You are the curator of your data.

And we're using this opportunity to also redesign your profile to make it much more attractive and easy to read.

So don't worry, we're still here :). And we want you to be part of this exciting journey.

By Farez Rahman

Anyone who has worked on a large enough project would have encountered this:

Every day, before starting work, we spend a good few minutes (sometimes up to 30 minutes) just getting our "brain into gear" and re-familiarising ourself with where we left off the day before. 

If you're a coder like me, you may have your dev environment already open from the day before, giving you clues to where you left off. You may also look at your repository log to read your last commit to find out where you were.

And then you pick up the next task, and start working on it. If the next item is a small task, you get on with it. If it's a larger task, you would spend a bit more time on the context of the problem… a bit of thinking time, which feels a bit heavy first thing in the morning.

Parking downhill

But here's a tip I picked up which has worked like magic for me, getting my brain into gear before my second sip of cappuccino in the morning. It's called "parking downhill" and the clue is in an earlier sentence above:

"If the next item is a small task, you get on with it".

The idea is to systematically give yourself a short list of "small tasks", or "pickup tasks", for you to do at the start of the next day. These are tasks that won't need much thought to complete. Like "Make page title bold" or "Order customer list alphabetically".

This way, we start the day by being productive straight away, with tasks that are simple, but help us "warm up" towards bigger tasks that require more thought.

The technique

So here's what you do...

Step 1. Create your pickup tasks

Before finishing for the day, or when you know there'll be a significant pause on the work before you continue with it, identify the next set of simple tasks that you need to do. These will form your "pickup tasks" for the next day.

Step 2. Note them down

Make a note of these "pickup tasks" somewhere easily accessible. I recommend that this "somewhere" be the one single place you refer to all the time for your pickup tasks, so that you won't forget it.

Remember that the whole point of this is to minimise having to think too much right at the start of your day, and get stuck in quick. I always have a text file called __PARKED__ at the root of all my project folders, one file per project. 

Step 3. Turn your computer off

And you know that when you come back to your project, you're ready to lift the handbrake, roll down the hill, and get into cruising speed effortlessly.

Bonus side effect

This technique gave me one happy side effect: I found myself ticking off tasks quickly, contributing to a real sense of achievement very early on in the day. That feeds into my motivation levels and keeps the momentum high.

Beyond coding

I actually picked this tip up while I was writing my dissertation at university, from an excellent book titled Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis.

Author Joan Bolker lists various productivity techniques to help dissertation writers but I think a lot of what is written can be useful for any sort of knowledge work. The original phrase "parking on the downhill slope" is mentioned in this book (read the excerpt).

I think most of know, or feel, that material wealth is not the only yardstick when it comes to success. But not many of us know what the alternative is, until we get there.

In her post, The Definition of Success, Natalie Armendariz writes about her inspiring journey to finding "success".

I realized that success isn’t defined by a salary or the amount of a paycheck. It isn’t the quantity of things that you own, the brand of car you drive, or the size of your house. Success should breed happiness and never leave you uninspired. Success is being able to sustain the perfect balance between living life to it’s fullest extent and spending as much time as you can with the people you love. It’s about making just enough income to live comfortably but not too much so that you don’t become burdened by the responsibilities that come with making too much.

As a freelancer and entrepreneur, you are breaking new ground every day. You don't make key decisions in a boardroom; you make them now. And you make them every, single, minute. And that's tough. Being self employed is bloody hard. But we both know... that it's worth it.

Brian Todd is a pro NBA basketball player. And he can dunk. Because he worked at it.   

Everybody fails. The only way to get to succeeding is failing. You have to learn how to succeed. It's just that simple. - Brian Todd

I hope this video inspires you to keep going.

FIVE/FIVE from chris jurchak on Vimeo.

I don't think we have as yet clearly articulated what our goals are with OnSavvy. With version 2 hot in the pipeline, it's a good time to do that. Here's something we put together that summarises our plans and where we are heading - 

We believe… That in this age, outdated, industrialist, ideas of human resource is no longer effective.

That job security has become an oxymoron.

That all of us now have a choice; to choose what skills we learn and who we work for, enabling us to combine our work and our passion, producing results that are highly creative.

We want each developer to be more than just their CV.

We want each organisation to be more than just their logo.

We want to help exciting employers and passionate developers find each other….It’s time for an update.

How

We want to work with innovative and forward thinking organisations who understand that the developer search is more than posting jobs and ticking checkboxes in a CV database search form and give them tools to control and manage their on-demand team.

We want to present each developer as a passionate, highly skilled, self-motivated, and self-improving individual, by combining curated information, social media information and work-related online reputation, all in one place, in his/her OnSavvy profile.

What

To achieve this, we have built the beginnings of OnSavvy.com, the online platform to connect passionate technology freelancers with innovative organisations who want to hire them.

OnSavvy provides…

Communities of developers and technology professionals, grouped by skills - we are starting with the Drupal community, and will soon expand into other language, framework and CMS communities like PHP, Rails, and Wordpress.

Database of developer profiles that you can search and filter on, currently by country and type of work they are looking for, and soon by availability and skills.

Developer & company profiles that showcase work as well as linking to all their social media profiles and reputation accounts. Soon we will be pulling all of this information into their profile, allowing you to view and monitor member online activities in one place.

Corporate profiles that allow companies to promote and highlight the projects their teams work on. Soon we will include sophisticated company profiles that will allow businesses to provide a better brand message to developers, and publish relevant images, videos and team member profiles.

Bookmarking features that allows you to bookmark your favourite members so that you can return to them and contact them when the need for new team members arises.

Job posts for vacancies that get sent out to each relevant developer and posted to social media, including the Drupal.org jobs board. External posts will be under the OnSavvy name so that you do not get inundated with irrelevant emails - we do the filtering for you.

  A bit more about us

To date, we have over 300 profiles of passionate Drupal developers, most of which are from the UK and the US.

We are growing and gaining a positive reputation in the tech community, and we want to work with innovative organisations to help us shape the future of tech freelancing.

By Rob Riley, Drupal/web developer and OnSavvy member

(Photo credit: marsmettn tallahassee on Flickr)

I first started working remotely from home several years ago and when it was a bit less of a 'thing'. I'd quit my full-time job in education to become a freelance IT consultant and developer.

Remote working wasn't a choice. The ability to VPN to client networks and quickly solve problems using various tools (Apple Remote Desktop, Remote Desktop Connection, SSH, VNC) was an essential part of the job. Clients communicated with me via numerous messaging systems and expected a swift response.

I quickly realised that 75% of my work (predominantly IT support then) could be done remotely. Even when there was a physical requirement (moving or plugging in equipment) it was quicker to instruct someone onsite over the phone than go onsite.

This was great. I was getting good hourly rates and I didn't need to leave the house. Heck I didn't even need to get dressed. I could set up with my laptop wherever I felt most comfortable, dip in and out of work as I pleased, intersperse my day with non-work tasks such as shopping or laundry (the kind of things that 'normal' people had to do in evenings or weekends), play guitar while I was watching progress bars or verbose output and basically please myself. At the time I was almost smug about my new-found liberal and non-conformist way of life and did, in some ways, consider myself superior to the commuting nine-to-fiver.

You can tell already where this is going.

What I learned over the next few years was that working almost exclusively from home was a long way from the luxury that people assume it is when you tell them it’s what you do. Without the necessary discipline and attitude, it can actually be nothing short of a career-damaging burden and a depressing existence. I've found myself at times feeling cut off, uninspired, longing for an excuse to leave the house and envious of commuters with structured working hours. Yes the same commuters I once so arrogantly looked down on.

So without further ado, here is my definitive list of pros, cons and tips for remote working:

Pros:

No commute. You’ll save time, money and feel lucky when you’re at home, warm and dry in January and 2 inches of snow has brought the rail networks to a grinding halt.

You’ll spend more time with your family. This is especially relevant in the case of children (I have two) where you get to see all the wonderful new things they do each and every day. This stuff is priceless and irreplaceable.

Cons:

Without disciplined hours and daily structure you’ll find yourself with zero distinction between your work and your life, sometimes seven days a week.

Severely reduced potential for chance meetings, networking, discussion and sharing of knowledge between peers - all things that are essential to a freelancer/small business owner. Yes your computer provides you with numerous ways to communicate with people remotely but  ironically (unless you quit all apps and disable all notifications) it’s also the most distracting thing when trying to converse with someone.

Unavoidable domestic involvement. Again, more relevant in the case of children. However good you are at your job, children are better at disrupting a household. It takes an unnaturally selfish person to hear a domestic meltdown from the other end of the house and not feel at least slightly obliged to drop everything and assist.

Temptation to ‘quickly’ do other things. Perhaps you need a few bits from the supermarket or a new tyre on the car. It’s easy to convince yourself that you’re somehow cheating the system by getting these things done during off peak times and putting your work off until later. Well, you’re not. You’re cheating yourself.

Overt complacency. It’s very comfortable working at home. Wouldn’t it be nice to quickly run some out-of-hours updates on a server and earn some extra cash? No, because you’ll find yourself driving to site in the middle of the night to do a hard restart and some diagnostics when the updates hang and the server needs to be accommodating 100+ people by 9am the following morning.

Disturbances. Households are noisy places. No matter how professional you are, screaming children and daytime television as a backdrop to a client call or Skype meeting looks bad.

Self-esteem. Sometimes you’ll feel lazy not leaving the house. Others will occasionally think this of you. Despite the crazy hours you’re sometimes working, you might start to believe it.

Perpetually working. There’s an overwhelming temptation to always work (evenings/weekends) - especially if it means a few extra quid but this can be a very false economy. We all need rest and change. And there’s nothing like a late working session to ensure that the following day you wake up late, miss several urgent phone calls and begin the day stressed and trying to prioritise one angry voicemail over another. The fact that you were working late won’t make an unhappy client any more sympathetic than if you went out raving and slept on someone’s bathroom floor.

Tips:

Set up a workspace with a desk, chair, filing cabinet, phone and whatever you need to create your own office environment. Have a door that shuts if possible and make sure your children know it’s not another playroom. The sofa and a laptop will simply not cut it. Distractions are abundant and it’s terrible for your posture. You will suffer headaches and neck tension without a doubt.

Structure your diary and working hours as best as possible. At the very least have a 1/2 hour lunch break where you WALK AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER. Sometimes you'll have to work into the evening or start insultingly early and it'll be unavoidable but don't use that as an excuse to have no structure. It's better to have a structure you can alter occasionally than none at all.

Equally try to structure your non-work life (and family time, if applicable) as this will help to keep your working hours disciplined. “I must finish at five as I'm taking the kids swimming at six” for example. Without scheduled non-work activities, both work and non-work life will suffer. It can be hugely damaging to family life (and your conscience) if they feel you aren’t making time for them. If necessary, publish your diary where your clients or colleagues can see it. Most calendar applications can publish your availability so others can simply see when you are (and more importantly aren’t) available without displaying details of your weekend arrangements. Once people know you can work remotely, they’ll have no qualms in asking you to do something at any time, no matter how inappropriate. Sometimes you won’t mind and consider it simply part of the game but I guarantee that ‘urgent’ call (my mouse finger is aching, what do you recommend?) will come in the middle of Eastenders on Christmas eve after three bottles of mulled wine, mid food-coma.

NEVER start the day without getting dressed. It just doesn't work. If you're running a bit late, maybe sacrifice your bi-daily shave but don't work in your PJs. It takes ten minutes to shower and dress. Nothing catastrophic will happen in that time. If you do happen to begin the day late and feeling pressured, don’t let it dictate the entire day. Make some coffee, get your head down and regain control.

Arrange onsite work at least weekly, where possible. Try combining some of the potentially remote bits to make a worthwhile visit to a client. If you're developing remotely, go and work alongside some other developers or simply take your pick of the numerous co-working spaces available. You'll meet people, share knowledge and experience, get yourself known and increase your potential for chance meetings and work opportunities.

Avoid attempting tricky or risky tasks remotely (see Con no.5). It almost always goes wrong and you’ll end up with a sleepless night and a headache.

Try to avoid spending all day on Facebook. It's tempting when there's no one to tell you off but let's be honest, there's no advantage to it whatsoever. The same really goes for all social networks unless what you're doing is directly work-related. As a freelancer you’re both boss and employee. Are you happy paying yourself to socialise?

Try, where possible, to have actual time off. If you're self-employed you'll obviously not get paid leave which can be a problem but try to see it as part of the bigger picture. We all need rest and life outside of work. All work and no play etc.

I’ve tried to keep this succinct as it could easily evolve into a general discussion about working for yourself. The trick I’ve found, is to treat remote working as if you are going to a ‘normal’ job as much as possible and try to work as if you do have a boss watching over you who is expecting results! 

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By Farez Rahman

Remember back in Feb 2013 when Yahoo's CEO banned all staff from working remotely? (No?)

There quite a few strong opinions outside of the big Y about that move, from career experts, to entrepreneurs to policy makers. Marissa Meyer (Yahoo's CEO) said working on-site increases innovation serendipity (my words). While Richard Branson said that's a load or rubbish (my words again).

Personally, I thought that was a strange move. I believe that working in an office during office hours should be no more than a suggestion. Do it if you want to. But work from home if that makes you more productive and happier. You can't dictate where and when people work. Than again I also believe that magical things happen during random conversations and work downtime. So I can see Meyer's point.

(If you're an employer, here's a great article on how some companies are successfully managing remote teams)

I know that my discipline level is pretty crap. I get distracted easily. Especially if I work at home. Yet, the reason I'm freelancing is because freedom is vey important to me. The word free in freelancing is the important bit. An office environment and rigid office hours makes me suffocate.

So it was interesting to see this discussion surfacing in a Facebook group recently, about the merits of working remotely vs on-site, as a freelancer.

It was an interesting one because, despite objective merits on both sides, ultimately it comes down to personal choice and how the working arrangement fits into your personal goals.

Here are the top 3 fors and againsts that came out of that Facebook thread:

Top 3 reasons for freelancers working remotely:

1. You dictate the time and place that works best for you. If you code best at night or if cafes gets your creative juices flowing, then you can adjust your working environment accordingly.

2. You can live somewhere cheaper and make the most of what you earn. If you are young, and you don't yet have the commitment of a family to support, then the ability to work remotely means you can use this opportunity to travel and see the world while working.

3. Pointless meetings and office distractions actually reduce productivity. Working remotely means you're not sucked into them.

Top 3 reasons against freelancers working remotely:

1. Some projects require a level of collaboration that you just can't get from working remotely.

2. You're much more "in the loop" when working on-site because lots of details about the business/project surface during casual interactions between team members.

3. You can usually command a higher freelancing rate from working on-site. This is interesting, but I don't know how true this is - would you know of any statistic that proves this?

By Farez Rahman

Here's a situation that, as a freelancer, you will encounter sooner or later: during an early meeting with a potential client, after telling you about the project, he asks that you "do a deal", saying...

"There's more work in this for you"

(Experienced freelancers: sound familiar?)

In other words, the cheap client wants someone, anyone, to do the work, but isn't willing to pay good money for it.

Here's how to detect such a gem of a client on your BS radar:

- He's reluctant to talk about money and budgets (but interested in your daily rate)

- He dives into "how amazing this project is" within the first 10 minutes of the meeting

- Talks mostly about his project instead of asking about you and your skills

- He starts comparing you with other (perhaps fictional) freelancers who are cheaper

So… how to deal with this client?

1. Try and get an idea of budget. If he's reluctant, then you make the move. Say something like "from previous experiences, a project like this usually takes around X months and costs Y". You're not giving a quote and you're not bound by that number. You're just trying to squeeze that number out of his brain.

2. Once you've provided a quote or estimate, if he's still insistent on doing a discount while promising "more work in future", suggest the following: say you'll charge him the normal rate for this work, but you are willing to discuss discounts on future work. In other words, if he lives up to his promise of giving you more work in future, then you're willing to give something back in return (the discount).

3. Refer him to sites where he can get cheaper freelancers to fight each other to take his business, like elance, freelancer.com or odesk.

Basically, you don't want to get into a situation where the client who is hiring you is only doing it because you're cheap. It's not way to start a relationship. As soon as someone cheaper comes along, you're out. It also says the following about the client:

- He sees the relationship as one of employer and employee. The best client relationships are one where both sides see each other as partners.

- He doesn't think your work provides enough value. If he did, he would not be focused on price.

- He may not understand his project enough to understand the value you will bring to it. In this case, if you see real potential I the project, and are excited about the prospect of working on it, spend a bit more time with him to work out what the real value of your contribution is, and demonstrate that what you'll be charging is a bargain.

Life is too short. As freelancers who pride ourselves in the quality of our work and the value we bring to this world, we should always be looking for projects that will bring out the best in us.

The only way this can happen is if you are selective about your projects and work with clients who value you for who you are and the value you bring to the table. The client will appreciate this too.

Wins, for both sides.

By Farez Rahman

How many agencies or freelancers have you come across that can inspire us with their work. How many times have you looked at one of their websites and thought, "That's who I want to work for/with".

In my experience: rarely.

It's not that most people don't or can't produce great work. It's because there is lack of investment in one essential element: communication

You may have built the most amazing site/app/vehicle/insert-amazing-product-here, but if you don't communicate it, nobody will know.

And if you want it to stand out, tell a story. 

Some people put their "achievements" in a CV/resume. Some create a website telling people what they've done. Some create a portfolio of work.

The inspirational ones... they do this:

Which would you rather spend time on... writing your boring CV, or communicating your work.

Tell a story.

By Farez Rahman

Freelancing is one of the most rewarding career moves, but can also be the hardest. You're essentially running a one-person business. This means splitting your time between doing the work that your client paid you to do, and managing everything else around doing that work, like marketing, responding to enquiries, writing proposals, accounting, admin, etc. You know, the boring stuff.

And you can't ignore them either. According to a Freelance Industry Survey, two of the biggest problems freelancers face are finding clients and dealing with the "feast and famine" cycle (alternating periods of having work and not having any). So to keep work coming through the pipeline, you can't ignore doing "manager" tasks.

Paul Graham, the angel investor, has a useful pair of terms to describe the two roles: maker and manager. As a freelancer, you're juggling these two roles every day. That can be difficult and stressful. 

"There are two types of schedule, which I'll call the manager's schedule and the maker's schedule. The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals." 

...

"But there's another way of using time that's common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can't write or program well in units of an hour. That's barely enough time to get started."

The key to being both a good maker and a good manager is in understanding the needs of each role and adjusting your daily schedule to support them.

"When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That's no problem for someone on the manager's schedule. There's always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker's schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it."

"For someone on the maker's schedule, having a meeting is like throwing an exception. It doesn't merely cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work."

Furthermore, the idea of "flow" is important for makers. It is the essence of why we freelance - we are passionate about the work we do and being in flow with our work is like being given a glimpse of Nirvana (not the band... unless your idea of heaven is actually seeing them). 

Here's good ol' Wikipedia's definition of flow:

"Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does."

Flow is so important for productivity that some companies make sure that their developers are given the best environment to achieve that state. Fog Creek Software is a fantastic example of that. 

So how do we become productive at our maker and manager tasks? The answer is in setting aside maker and manager time in your calendar and not letting those two sets of tasks encroach upon one another. And making sure that you provide a long enough time for your maker tasks to allow you to get into flow.

Ash Maurya, in his book Running Lean, wrote about achieving flow for startup founders and entrepreneurs, and I find this is applicable also to freelancers (whether or not you see yourself as an entrepreneur)  

First, he breaks his daily activities down into 3 categories:

Planned maker activities

Planned manager activities

Unplanned maker/manager activities. 

And then create work/productivity hacks that work for him around those 3 groups. Here are the relevant ones for this post (out of the 10 that he outlined in his article):

Work Hack 1: Establish uninterruptible time blocks for maker work.

Work Hack 2: Achieve maker goals as early in the day as possible.  

Work Hack 3: Schedule manager activities as late in the day as possible. 

Work Hack 4: Always be ready for unplanned activities especially customer support. 

Here is how I manage my daily maker and manager tasks:

9am- 10am: Go through emails, schedule calls and prepare todo items for the day.

10am - 11am: Follow up on enquiries, admin tasks, other manager tasks.

11am - 2pm: Meetings, calls, emails. 

2pm - 6pm: Maker tasks plus any end-of-day email updates to send out.

I try to minimise face-to-face meetings to reduce the time I spend on manager tasks between 11am and 2pm, so usually I will be able to start earlier on my maker tasks during that time.

I don't think one schedule works for everyone, because each of us has our own body clock for productivity. This is another fascinating productivity topic which I will write about in my next post! If you can't wait, look up "Circadian Rhythm".

By Farez Rahman

"So how much will this project cost and how long will it take?"

The million dollar question every freelancer and agency faces. Nothing moves before the client gets a satisfactory answer to this question, and signs it off.

Estimating projects is one of hardest thing to get right. And there are no shortcuts - experience is still the only reliable teacher. 

With all our best efforts to create a tight spec, project scope and estimate, there will always be "grey areas" where whether something is within scope or not can be argued either way. I like to call this the "twilight zone" are of the scope - where time just don't follow normal rules of reality!

Below are some from my own experiences as a freelancer and owner of a web development agency. Anticipating them and agreeing up front with the client on how to cost them, and whether they constitute billable work, will help reduce these grey areas. 

Some of them are relevant only if you're building your product on open source code built by a community of developers (I use Drupal extensively, so the examples below was from my experiences building websites with Drupal). 

1. Site administration training

Once you hand over the product, lets say a website, you will need to train the client on how to use it. The user-facing side of it should be familiar already to the client because they would have seen the designs and functional spec. The gotcha here is in the admin side - the tools they will need to manage the website and its content.

You would normally have a bit of training set aside for this, but will you be covering every single admin situation in your training? Most likely no.

So if the client emails you a week later and asks you to show you how to do something, is that considered billable time?

Or if you don't provide an admin manual, and they forget the training you provided, and call you at 8pm about an urgent content change, which they've forgotten how to do, is it your problem? Should you assist them? Is that billable support time?

Thankfully we had a post-launch support arrangement in place, so we just used that budgeted time to handle this.

Suggestion: Outline in detail what your handover training will cover, and state that anything outside of that training scope will be either billable time.

2. Technical handover

Recently my team and I completed a project and handed it over to a client that has in-house IT personnel that will be responsible for maintaining the site.

It turned out that they then required some admin features that can be easily implemented using ons of the site-building modules the site uses (this was a Drupal site and the module is Views). We ended up training the client on how to that module. This was the equivalent of providing a half-day training which some training companies charge hundred of Pounds for.

Training the client in using developer modules was not "in scope" but doing what we can to help them maintain the site themselves was. We were just not aware how deep the technical knowledge was required on the client side. A clearer support scope would have made this easier to deal with.

Suggestion: Make it clear in your project scope what a handover entails. You could simply set aside and agree a few hours of billable for "unforeseen training requests".

3. Bugs in the community code

During a project, we encountered a really frustrating bug. It was frustrating because we simply could not find anything in our custom code that was causing it. 

In the end it turned out that the bug exists within the open source software's community core code. In this case it was in a Drupal module.

We spent a lot of time checking our code, checking the downloaded Drupal module code, checking the issue tickets on drupal.org, and managing communication with the client. All in all about 2-3 days worth of our time. 

Suggestion: Just be aware that this happens, and set aside a buffer for it in your timeline.

4. Fixing the bug

Once a "community code" bug like in the example above was encountered, is it clear in the project whose responsibility it us to support the fixing of that bug?

If you're responsible for delivering a working product, the client has a right to demand that you fix all bugs, including those not in your own custom code. This could be a huge cost on you, because the process of fixing bugs and submitting a patch in open source software not only involves fixing the code, but discussions with others who use the module and working with the module's maintainer to get the patch in. 

Our client understood open source software so they were happy to sponsor the bug fix, which we will contribute back into the community.

Another option would have been a workaround to the bug, which may involve some spec or UX changes. Does your project terms cover these potential scenarios?

Suggestion: For open source projects, I would highly recommend that fixing community code be something the client support. They are the beneficiaries of thousands of hours contributed by the community so its only right that they also contribute to its development. Make it clear in your client agreement about this.

5. "Quick changes"

Ah, yes, those "quick changes" a.k.a. "easy fixes" a.k.a. "small thing". A.k.a. "free work". Clients like asking for these.

But programmers are also at fault. We tend to underestimate the effort required for tasks.

These little things add up, and as a result both developer and client get frustrated because the developer starts realising how much he has underestimated the work by and he's not getting paid for the additional time, and the client starts wondering what's taking him so long.

Every request cost more time than we usually think. Each one of them takes time to scope, sign off, work on, QA, tweak, test, deploy, train, track (for billing), and invoice.

Suggestion: I found that the best way to deal with "small requests" is to batch them. I try to batch them into roughly a 2 or 3 days' worth of work (at initial ballpark estimate) before start scoping and quoting for the work.

A note on billable time: it really is up to you how you treat these unexpected work. You may bill for it or you may just do it for "free" out of goodwill, if it's a client you'd like to keep a good relationship with. You you opt for the latter, do make sure they know what you're doing for them and the work it involves - it's up to you to demonstrate that you're giving them something of real value for "free".

What about you? Have you encountered any "twilight zone" requests in your projects? How did you deal with them? I'd love to hear form you.

By Farez Rahman

A while ago I wrote in "How to attract freelance Drupal work" about going niche as one of the things you should do to make it easier for work to find you.

What I didn't mention are two other reasons why you should be niche: 

1. you can earn more, because 

2. price becomes almost irrelevant

How so? Because when you are seen to be an expert at a particular skill, clients will pay you top dollar to access that skill. In fact, money becomes a secondary criteria when deciding to hire you or your competitor. 

This is why when I hear people complain about competition from "cheap labour" from skill auction sites like Elance and Freelancer, I always advise them to review their niche offering and be completely focused on becoming an expert in that niche. Cheap labour isn't going to disappear, and competition is a fact of any business. This is not new. But you can make all that irrelevant.

For example, instead of being just a "web developer", be a "Drupal web developer". Even better, be a "Drupal Commerce developer" or "Drupal developer specialising in publishing platform" or "Drupal for Government specialist".

To explain this better, I urge you to watch a fantastic video interview with Ramit Sethi below. Ramit Sethi is one of today's popular experts on personal wealth and earning more from your work. (He was also a co-founder of PBWiki, so he's intimately familiar with the tech industry).

The video is actually targeted at photographers and artists, but the principles apply to all creative professionals, like developers, digital architects and designers.

Before you click on the video (below), let me highlight a few relevant quotes...

"They try to appeal to everybody…"

From my own experience, this is how I see most developers and designers sell themselves. Their profiles read "Graphic designer" or "Web developer", or something similarly generic. As Ramit says in the video, this is "classic rookie mistake". 

"I shoot cats, and I shoot houses, and I shoot weddings, and I shoot advertising…"

Here's a parallel in the web development world "I build brochure sites, and e-commerce sites, and social media sites, and music sites…"

"A lot of times we obsess about price… when you can really hit on what they want, what they hope, fear and dream, price becomes, almost, a mere triviality"

I'll now let Ramit explain it all in this awesome interview. Pay attention to the mother with a newborn example - the link below will take you directly there. But I would highly encourage you to watch the whole 1.5 hours if you have time. It is excellent.

This video is a conversation between two highly motivated Americans, so if you're a UK viewer and find them a bit OTT, but please do bear with it… there's a tonne of golden advice in there :)

(The link, if the video above is not showing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tsJ_-yINxs&t=19m44s)

I would love to hear more about how you have won projects without competing on price. Tell us your story below!

By Farez Rahman

Winning freelance work can be a hit and miss affair. It really is case of winning some and losing some; hopefully more winning than losing as your freelancing career progresses.

One factor that will increase your win rate is the “chemistry” you have with the client, and the only way to make chemistry happen is to find the right kind of client and project. This will allow you to be excited about the project and fall in love with the client.

Let me give you an example from our latest website client project, an organisation in the film industry. Who doesn’t love films? Especially one that produces world famous names. We are huge fans, and this really got our juices flowing!

Despite being twice more expensive than our nearest competitor, we won the pitch. How? In the client’s own words, because they “fell in love with us”.

Heres’s why:

We were genuinely excited about the project, and it showed. Our initial meeting was 4 hours long and that time just flew by. There was no doubt in their mind that if they hired us, we’d be giving the project 110%. Simply because we love everything about it.

We understood the client because we made a huge effort to. We went to meet them at their premises, spent hours understanding their needs, took a tour of their building, met their staff and spoke to them, and tried to absorb the “vibe” in the organisation so that we can understand how to translate that into the website design and branding. We stepped into the client’s shoes and tried to “get” them. All before sending them our proposal.

We wanted to be in their “gang”. We genuinely saw ourselves as part of the team, rather than “hired guns”, and that created an atmosphere of collaboration rather than one of client and supplier. We bounced off ideas from even before we won the project, and every meeting has been inspirational.

The only reason all that happened was because we liked the client and we loved the project. 

Don't get me wrong, the project had it's own share of difficulties (what project doesn't?!), but the fact we were all committed and had open communication throughout, meant we were able to get on top of these and produce a really nice piece of work.

Clients love hiring people who are enthusiastic about them and their work, and you can’t fake it, so pick clients/projects you want to work with. 

So, think about who you’d like to work with and the type of project you want to work on, and then go find them! It makes winning projects so much easier.

I’d love to hear what your ideal client or project is below! Or if you have an OnSavvy developer profile, I recommend describing them there too (post a link to your profile in the comment so we can see it).

By the way, OnSavvy is dedicated to specialists and freelancers who love what they do, and want to shape their career by being picky about the projects they take on, and immerse themselves wholeheartedly in a way that enhances the end result. Come join us.

Do you have any other tips for winning freelance work? Or are you struggling with winning pitches? Why not share in the comments area below, or you can tweet me at @farez.

By Farez Rahman

Freelancing is a very satisfactory way of earning a living. The money can be quite good, and the freedom you get is priceless. In a time where job security is an oxymoron, freelancing is sometimes the only avenue, even if temporarily. For most freelancers, the primary concern is uncertainty of the income stream. You are not being paid a regular income each month. Instead, you need to go out and look for work, and sometimes things may be dry for a few weeks, which can be very stressful. If this is where you are at the moment, don't worry, you're not alone. I've been there several times! In this post I'll show you how to increase visibility for yourself and increase your chances of being hired. It's not an exhaustive list for sure - advice is aplenty online - but here are some that I've known to be quite effective. Find a niche One of the surest ways to blend into the greyness of obscurity is to be just like everyone else. Instead, branding yourself as a specialist in one skill or industry will help work find you. For example, when I changed from being just a run-off-the-mill web developer to calling myself a "Drupal specialist", I started getting a consistent stream of enquiries. Until now, I've never had to respond to job ads nor pay to advertise my consultancy. Pick a niche where the demand for good talent is growing. Your mailbox isn't going to start filling up by being a COBOL specialist. Create a presence You need to be visible before people can find you. This means having a website or a profile online that has your name, contact details and all the info relevant to your skills. Here's what you need to have on your website, as a minimum:

Your name or business name

Contact details

Address or location(*)

Short description of what skills you are selling (try not to go crazy here... niche, remember?)

A portfolio of previous work, including any personal projects

Links to all your social media profiles

Use a bit of SEO savvy to make sure your website gets a chance to be discovered on search engines (*)I am a huge supporter of working remotely and hiring offshore, but the majority of employers would still prefer to hire locally. Having your location down will make it easier for these employers to find you. Speak up Well, even with the best website in the world, nobody is going to know about you unless you show the world that you exist. You could spray paint your name all across town, but that would attract the wrong sort of enquiry. So how do you get noticed? Here are some things that have been known to work:

Help people. Wherever you can. For example, helping other developers in chatrooms or forums (e.g., Quora). Or responding to public tweets or Facebook posts asking for assistance. Or commenting on blog posts.

Start a blog and post regularly. Post content that is relevant to your niche, not just random stuff. Do some research on SEO and how relevant content helps your site ranking.

Give away useful stuff that people will want to share, like tutorials, templates, ideas, code… anything that will be helpful to others in their work, or help them learn something new.

List yourself on relevant, reputable, directories. You may have to pay a bit of money, but it can be worth it. For example, our Acquia partner page contributed to new enquiries and business in our Drupal niche.

Get involved Gone are the days of the solitary programmer sitting in a cubicle coding away in isolation. Ok, maybe the cubicle bit still exists, but almost all digital work now are social. Open source software is created collaboratively and knowledge is shared on best practices. Even proprietary technology have communities of users and developers that collaborate to contribute and share. By getting in involved, you not only help nurture and grow the community you're in, but you're also making yourself visible and heard, which could lead to referrals. Employers whom I have spoke to increasingly cite involvement in the community as an important indicator of the your passion and interest in your field. Try collaborating in an open source project or volunteering at events or conferences. If there isn't an event in your area, create one! Demonstrate knowledge and ability Unless you're applying for a job that involves training at the start of the contract, you will need to hit the ground running. Employers need to know that there's zero ramp-up time from hiring to you getting into full flow. This is why demonstrating that knowledge and skill is important. You can do this by…

Having a portfolio of work - this is the first thing employers will look at. Unless you're just an illustrator or designer, don't just post images. Describe the work you did, your role in it, and how you made a difference. If you don't have any previous relevant work, build something yourself.

Give talks, however small. Talks give you visibility and shows potential employers that you not only have the knowledge, but know how to communicate it. Valuable stuff.

Collect testimonials. Confirmation from past clients and peers that you are a good egg carries a lot of weight.

Hi everyone.

We're about to make a few updates to OnSavvy profile listings, and would like to give you a heads up on one particular update. 

From tomorrow, you will notice that there's a minimum amount of information that you'll need to fill in your profile before it appears on the listings. You just need to make sure that the following actions are taken on your profile so that it is visible in the listings:

1. Upload an image (this can be your photo or a logo)

2. Select a country where you're normally based

3. Replace the placeholder text in your profile description with a relevant description about yourself.

If your profile is incomplete, when you log in, you will see the following notice:

"Your profile is not currently visible. You will appear in our listings by filling out more information. Click here to update your profile now"

All you have to do is click on the link that says "Click here to update your profile now" and make sure the relevant fields are filled in.

We want profiles On Savvy to be really awesome so that it reflects the type of people that are in our community, which are passionate, talented and dedicated professionals. Hopefully this new change will help us get closer to that aim!

See you On Savvy!

  This is the transcript from a Spotlight interview Nicole did with Alec Reynolds (Kalamuna) from The Bay Area in California. You can view Alec’s On Savvy profile here.

Nicole : Can we start by you telling us a bit about yourself Alec? 

Alec : I am one of the co-founders of a consultancy called Kalamuna. We do exclusively Drupal work. We’re actually a group of Drupal freelancers that got together through a developer collective. We’d done a couple of projects together and decided we wanted to start working together and do something a little different with Drupal. We’re really excited about that and have been having a lot of fun with it. That’s a lot of my life, aside from that, before talking with you, I’m a runner, a musician, and I do a couple of other things on the side to keep myself sane and expand my attention span, because programming has a tendency to shrink my attention span. I’m trying not to become attention deficit or something.

 Nicole : So how long have you been developing with Drupal?

 Alec : I started developing with Drupal about 2 / 2-and-a-half years ago, so I’m relatively new to the game. I managed only a handful of Drupal 5 sites. That’s kind of, I think for most Drupal programmers I talk to, what version they got involved with, it’s the landmark. So I was in heavy with Drupal 6, and now I don’t even deal with Drupal 6 sites, I’m all Drupal 7. 

 Nicole : And was that transition fairly easy to make would you say?

Alec : It was actually really fun, because I did the transition just right, I think a lot of people got forced into it too quickly, they got into 7 when it wasn’t mature. I really got into 7 right when it was reaching maturity, and had a great time with it, I love it. There’s a lot of things I can do in Drupal 7 that you just can’t do in Drupal 6.

Nicole : What would you say you love about Drupal? Do you have a couple of things that come to mind that you really appreciate about it?

Alec : I think the top thing, the thing that got me into it really, was the community. I went to the local San Francisco users group, the community that organises BAD camp. They really opened my eyes. There were so many different, exciting things going on, people really loving what they did. People that weren’t necessarily hard-core programmers, which when I was first getting my start, working for a lot of non-profits, I worked with a lot of people that weren’t experienced programmers, and seeing that, people that could actually engage with the software without having tonnes of programming knowledge, that was really exciting. So that the first thing I think that got me attracted to Drupal, was that community. 

Nicole : The next question on my list was do you have any involvement in the Drupal community, which segues quite well. Do you attend meet-ups?

Alec : Yeah, in-person meetings excite me a lot more than chatting on IRC, so yeah I’ve presented at a couple of different camps in the California area and will probably be doing a presentation with one of my founders up at Drupal Con Portland in mid May. Aside from the DUGs  (Drupal User Groups), we're always contributing patches online, we definitely do get down to the nitty-gritty.

Nicole : What would you say are your strengths as a developer?

Alec : I think one of the strengths that I have is one of the reasons I actually teamed up with my two co-founders : looking towards the frontiers in Drupal. We use Panopoly, which is made by one of the guys that is a partner in Pantheon Systems, which does a Drupal hosting solution, which we use exclusively. It’s a great distribution that’s built using panels for doing layout, and I guess my strength as a developer is using Panopoly to do rapid prototyping. I can spin up a new site for a client very quickly and put it together to give them an idea of what the user experience is going to be like before they’ve laid out too much budget on something they don’t know is going to work.

Nicole :  That’s a very important stage of a project. It’s even helpful for us right, as a designer or developer, helps improve that process. That’s great.

Alec : Yeah, sometimes when a client says something and they’re like ok, is this possible or is it not, it’s like, ‘let’s try it out’. With Drupal, it’s pretty easy.

Nicole : Do you have any tricks or tips that you could suggest for other developers?

 Alec : Yeah, check out Panopoly. It’s awesome. A lot of people are using it, it’s getting a lot of traction, and I think it’s a great preview of hopefully what laying out content is going to be like in Drupal 8. Either that, or Spark, those are the two things that are going on right now. I hope that’s the future.

 Nicole : Would you describe for us what you would say your ideal client would be? Or if you could put a few characteristics together of a perfect project or job, what would you say those are?

 Alec : You know, they come in all different shapes and sizes. I think your initial question, about the ideal client is, who that is, that’s probably the most important part to me. I have a person I really respect in the consultancy space once told me that she never has a client that she wouldn’t go out to dinner with, and  I think that’s actually a great rule of thumb. To be able to work with your client and be able to communicate at the same frequency.

 Nicole : That’s right, you spend a lot of time with them, it’s important you get on.

 You mentioned you’re a musician. Tell us more about that.

Alec : Musician is probably a stretch. Everyone can sing, right and I probably fall into that category as a musician. Everyone can sing, and everyone should sing, but not everyone should necessarily be heard singing. I have a house full of instruments and everything, but it doesn’t necessarily make me a recorded artist.

Nicole : What would you say is the biggest challenge that Drupal developers will face in the next 12 months? Do you have any prophecies there?

 Alec : One of the things I personally worry about, is that it feels like the Drupal space, and there’s a lot of good things about this, but the Drupal space is getting more crowded and more competitive. The community that I got involved with, has changed. People that have been in the community longer than I, I think have noticed it more. It’s become a lot more corporate, there’s bigger projects, the guys that you once thought of as your friends are now maybe your competitors. Competitors is kind of a new word in the Drupal space. And I’m a little worried about that for myself and for people that are just starting to get involved with Drupal.

Nicole : So there’s a lot more work then? And a lot more people looking for Drupal developers, and a lot more developers coming through right?

Alec : I hope so. That’s one of the reasons that sites like yours, and I’ve seen a couple of others that don’t really fill the same need as your site, but are trying to help developers gain the skills they need and to connect the clients, and I think that’s actually the part that I really like about the eco-system maturing, is that, you know, there’s better options. There’s more people, it’s a vibrant space to be.

Nicole : Have you seen anything made with Drupal that you were impressed by recently that you could point us towards?

Alec : There were some really cool commerce sites I was looking through, Ryan, I can never say his last name, but he the core maintainer of Drupal Commerce, he’s always tweeting different commerce sites that were built with Drupal Commerce. There’s been a couple that were really cool, I don’t remember what their names were. I think one of them was a men’s fashion thing which was pretty cool.

Nicole : Can you tell us, what is your biggest Drupal mistake?

Alec : I don’t know, I think the biggest mistake I ever had was probably not using some of the tools that I use now quick enough. I think when I was first starting with Drupal, I had a tendency to not think like a programmer when using it. Now when I think about things that I do in Drupal I try to automate things as much as I can, and at the very least, even if I’m not creating programs to automate, at least create better procedures. And if I’d done that, employed testing on a lot of my projects from day one when I first started, I think everything would have gone quicker. I would have a script I could run to do mundane tasks that take up my time and don’t let me focus on the things that are actually important to my clients. So that’s what I would do, automate and create procedures, when I first started instead of looking at it now.

 Nicole : It’s good to look back and compare with where you are now and see the progress in between.

Alec : Definitely, always try and save yourself more time as a developer no matter who you are. That’s a good idea.

 Nicole : So what did we miss? Is there anything you would like to add?

Alec : I don’t think so, I would actually like to hear a little more about On Savvy and how you guys are doing?

Nicole : Excellent, sure. We’ve been working on Savvy for a good couple of years now. We launched the beta in the summer of 2012. It’s been steadily growing in numbers and we’re getting a community of developers together. We have a backlog of functionality we want to implement, which we’re trying to order by the things that are going to be most beneficial. So it’s prioritising these tasks, which is another reason it’s really great to speak to people. 

We really value these interviews because we’re listening out for what’s going on and what people need. We have our overall goal, to show the communities passion and dedication. We want to expose people that are really passionate about what they do and go more behind the scenes to reveal more depth about them. We plan to implement functionality that allows you to show what events you’ve been attending, what you’ve been reading, what you’ve been ‘liking’, any code contributions, a way to follow people and bookmark key developers & companies, update your availability status… these are things that are all coming. 

Another part we want to develop as well is interaction between projects, there’s so many different elements to a Drupal - site builders, themers, architects or consultants. We don’t want to build something really generalized, we want to make sure we are catering to the specifics of Drupal development. And then we will extend across other communities, other eco-systems.. PHP, Ruby on Rails, design side even.

 Alec : I’m glad you guys started with Drupal, we really need it.

Nicole : A lot of developers don’t have their own web presence so hopefully we’ll help with that too.

 Alec : Cool, a lot of the stuff you are saying resonates a lot. Prioritisation with a couple of start-ups that I’ve worked with, it’s like ‘we need everything’, but we don’t know what our users need, and finding that out is always fun, it’s part of the gig.

Nicole : It does take the time, but it’s worth it. Great, it’s been so nice talking to you and I hope our paths cross again one day.

Alec : Great, thank you.

  Do you want to be part of our Savvy Spotlight series? Do you know anyone who should be?