The September 2009 UK edition of Wired ran an interesting article, carrying the same title as this post, by futurist Peter Schwartz. In the article, Schwartz proposed a 5 step plan to predicting and therefore safe guarding your future.
Tags: Adobe, AJAX, chosen technology, Competing technologies, e.g. open-source software, five easy steps, Flex, Freelancing, future, futurist, futurology, Peter Schwartz, plan, question, rapid application development, Ruby on Rails, test case, united kingdom, web development, web development example, Wired Magazine
Okay, so many of the points below aren’t purely my philosophy, but ideas and principles I have picked up along the way throughout my [development] career. Some relate to the UNIX philosophy, or even the Zen of Python, but wherever they’re from, they can be applied to many other domains.
Tags: Adobe, api, Asides, Design, Dev Opera, Development, Freelancing, Google, Google Code, JavaScript, Microsoft, philosophy, Python, unix, web community, work, Yahoo, zen, Zoho
Advertising and finding work as a freelancer has the potential to be extremely painful and difficult. However, having made the decision to go freelance, it is likely you are actually good at what you do, which gives you a great headstart.
Tags: 99Designs, advertising, adwords, Adwords service, affiliate links, amazon, business directories, ColdFusion, complicated accounting, contractor, ebay, equivalent search marketing service, freelance, freelancer, Freelancing, Google, lemon foundation, online brand, online business directories, programmermeetdesigner, ready-built network, search engines, sitepoint, temporary, the Lemon Foundation, Thomson, thomson local, touch local, web development resource, yell.com
In the first two parts of this series, I talked about setting up in business as a freelancer and publicising yourself via branding and blogging.
Tags: Adobe, associations, Australia, Bebo, Belgium, Birmingham, brightkite, Brighton, ColdFusion, colleagues, conferences, contacts, contractor, course networking, Edinburgh, facebook, Flex London User Group, freelance, freelancer, Freelancing, FriendFeed, friends, GAWDS, LinkedIn, local user groups, London, London Flash Platform User Group, London Geeks, meebo, MySpace, network, New Zealand, Online Relationships, plurk, programmermeetdesigner, pub, socialthing, temporary, tumblr, Twitter, United States, user groups, Web Standards Group, Web Standards Meetup, WSP, Yahoo
In the first part of this series I talked about setting yourself up in business. The next step is to publicise yourself and your skills. At this point, it is helpful to know exactly what line of work you want to be focusing on, since you will need to target your efforts.
Tags: Adobe, aggregators, blog, blog owner, brand, branding, brightkite, ColdFusion, contractor, demo example applications, europe, freelance, freelancer, Freelancing, FriendFeed, Google, micro-blogging, micro-blogging services, Microsoft, moveabletype expressionweb, online presence, online world, plurk, search engines, socialthing, temporary, tumblr, Twitter, typepad, united kingdom, United States, wordpress, Yahoo
You’re an experienced designer or developer with aspirations to become a freelancer. Shrugging off the corporate cloak —”It’s cosy! It fits well! You’ve had it for years!” — is becoming more and more common.
Tags: accountant, ColdFusion, company registration, contractor, experienced designer, freelance, freelancer, Freelancing, Inland Revenue, insurance, Internal Revenue Service, IRS, PAYE, Professional Contractors Group, tax, temporary, The Professional Contractors Group, trustworthy accountant, united kingdom, United States, VAT, web design, web development