Streetwalking, trolling and phishing: Getting the freelance gig

Getting yourself out "there" is a constant challenge for the full-time Techni-HO. Sure there are Social Media outlets like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. And of course we keep up blogs, journal articles, and public speaking events. But for day-to-day promoting yourself or finding other like minded "HOs" where can we go? In the realm of selling your time for money--Techni-ho fashion--word of mouth alone will not put food on the table.

Elance provides ways to create and manage your "e-presence" team

Elance offers a solution-and I hope they don't mind the allusion-to become your TechniPimp. As mentioned in earlier blog posts one of the downsides of going fully Freelance is not only finding the work and doing the work, but getting paid for the work. This also means negotiating and collecting fees.
Elance offers an online solution to many of those growing pains.

By offering a single storefront wherein "Johns" can cruise for talent, and the "Hos" can show their wares. Elance provides a method by which Techni-Hos and Johns can meet up, set up the commercial aspects of the job, and even ways to manage the project-by allowing for reviews of "Work-in-progress".

Start by creating a Free Account and first Free Job posting.

Looking for work? Sign up at Elance and search over 30,000 jobs today.
Find a world of talent online at Elance. Post your job today.

From there you can access all the of the services that Elance offers. As a contractor all the fees will be paid by the Johns as is right. The fees for the Johns to pay are very reasonable for role that they pay-as far as techni-pimps go very reasonable. 6.75%-8.75% as far as mark-ups go is very reasonable.




Unlike many contract houses they are not trying to get ungodly mark-ups on the talent the offer, after off the value-add for most contract houses is exceptionally disproportionate to the mark-up factors. I once worked with a Pimp who charged a 3x markup for a proposal that I wrote, filling a niche that I uniquely fit, with 0-zip-nil value add; when the client puked on the price they had the gall to tell me that my rate was too high.

Business Travel and organization

Keeping track of you travel itineraries while on the go can be very complex. Carrying about printouts of hotel confirmations, flight information, transportation requirements and other trip essentials can be downright frustrating and risky. After all, losing those pieces of paper leaves you at the mercy of the hotel, airline, and can put in arrears in a hurry.

Lately I have been using two different business travel tools, WorldMate Live and TripIt.

Each has mobile applications that assist in keeping track of itineraries. Merely email your official itinerary from any number of air carriers, hotels, or travel agents and your itinerary automatically updates. Once the itinerary is loaded you will be able to view your travel plans via the mobile application or any web browser.

http://www.worldmate.com/blackberry/
http://www.tripit.com/uhp/blackberry

From the mobile app you can quickly find:

• Dates and times of flights and hotels bookings
• confirmation numbers (as long as they were included in your confirmation letter
• accommodation names
• Maps (based on addresses included in confirmations

For the most part they both provide the promised itinerary details, well and serve their need. So it comes down to the other value-adds.

In this I prefer the Worldmate Mobile for its:

• currency converter (3 currencies simultaneously)
• world clock (4 cities at a time)
• weather look-up
• hotel booking (direct from hotels.com)

TripIt is a little quicker with the loading of new itineraries, and has more social networking plug-ins (if you care), and an online calender that Outlook or other iCal or *.ics feed readers. This means that you automatically get the itinerary added to your Calendaring application. Pretty handy.

Maybe in a few thousand more miles I will have a better read on which is better, but for now they each have their merits, Worldmate on my BB and TripIt on the web.

Dabbleboard: collaboration tool

I just stumbled upon Dabbleboard and I am immediately blown away

This could be one of the neatest things i have seen on the Cloud yet.

The embedded drawing in this link, is fully editable by guests, sharable but wholly unique. I can save it, store it locally, and distribute it. Just like you see here. Can lock it down as view only, or let others like you draw on it.

http://www.dabbleboard.com

Road-HO and Techni-ho travelblog

We techni-HOs tend to do a fair amount of traveling as well, so a needed thread here is business travel tools review and blog. Among indespensible tools of the trade are:

• http://www.onebag.com/
• http://www.worldmate.com/
• http://ekit.com/ekit/MobileInfo/Service/ekpassport_dual
• www.kayak.com

One-bag

I still have not fully converted to the one-bag philosophy to be honest, but most of the hints here are still useful if used piecemeal. I tend to travel overseas alot and have not fully committed to only one bag-- I always get 2 free checked bags (platinum elite after flying 90,000 miles before the end of August this year). The does and don't of packing in this case and the checklists have really been a good reality check for me. I still aspire to be a one-bag kind of traveler, but since I tend to travel two weeks at a time and don;t really like the idea of washing my socks and drawers in the hotel sink, I will stand to carry a slightly bigger bag.

Worldmate Live

This so far has been a life saver. The idea behind Worldmate is that after you book a trip, you email the itinerary from your registered email account to trips@worldmate.com. When the automated system receives the email from your account, it automatically adds it to your list of trip in your itineraries. I have tried other services like Tripit.com, but soon found Worldmate more to my liking since it had a free Blackberry app (also for iPhone, Nokia, WindowsMobile, Palm, and UIQ). The app for most platforms enables you to keep sync'd with the online itinerary (edit online or mobile), get maps, find nearby businesses.

The online itinerary manager also allows merges itinerary and hotel confirmations from the same time period into a single trip. So even if you booked the flights, hotels, cars, trains, buses, and even meeting via separate sites; they all land on the same trip and are therefore viewed in the same timeline. This has been a life save since often when overseas, I hope from one airline to another (booked separately for cost) and if I had to track the printed itineraries separately it would increase the chance of a missed connection.

ekit passport sim card

A phone that can make and receive calls at reasonable rates for most "civilised" countries is also a fine tool. Using my Verizon Crackberry overseas is hit and miss regarding the rates, and worst of all the airtime for roaming is very high making and receiving calls. In the EU and other European countries to receive calls is free with the ekit phone, that reduced my phone costs by more than half. Outgoing calls to the US is not too bad about 2/3 or less of using the Verizon phone.

Another option they offer is to assign you both and UK (+44) and US (+1) number for your friends and family to call. This makes them calling you cheaper, but will make you have to pay a 0.19 surcharge for in the incoming received call (as opposed to them paying long distance to the mobile phone 0.25-0.35/ minute). The ekit also includes a per-per-use data service, something that many low cost pre-paid local sim cards won't offer.

On the down side, outgoing calls made while overseas are programmed as a "call-back" service so it can be a pain, and the people you call won't be able to recognize your caller-id.

Kayak

Y'all should already know about this popular travel rate crawler. It trolls the internet to identify the best travel sites for your trip. I continue to use this even though my current employer requires we book through their travel agent. I use the site to force the favored itinerary onto the travel agent. Still nice.

So that's all for now. Maybe more comes to me later.