[Cialug] Volunteerism and stepping up a career

[Matthew Nuzum]

On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 2:46 AM, Scott Prader <sprader at iastate.edu> wrote:

> All I did was make a correlation to the subject matter of the article
> and the state of Iowa.  There are plenty of museums and other public
> places that are struggling in this economy that sure wouldn't mind
> some sort of volunteer-ism.
>
>
I'm starting to formulate a new idea here. Basically, don't do work for
free. (and by "starting", this has been in my head for at least a few
months)

I can think back to the projects I've done for free and I can tell you that
consistently, they were:

 1. Poorly specified
 2. Under appreciated
 3. The highest cost projects to support
 4. Generally a pain in the rear

I think this all ties back to the idea that people associate a value with
the cost. Advertisers don't pay as much money to be in magazines that are
free, people choose name brands over generic, etc, etc.

Therefore I propose one of these two tactics:

 1. Find something you enjoy and do it.
    a. It could be volunteering your time for an open source project,
however some of these definitely fall into the categories above
    b. Just something that scratches your own itch
 2. Go to one of the "elance" websites [1] [2] [3] and find a project that
is well specified and do it, just to learn how. I'm not suggesting taking
the job for the client or the money, but just work from
their specification to do the work.

I'm also formulating a new theory on what you should learn. :-) It is my
opinion that if you're going to learn a new skill, learn something new and
cutting edge. Ignore old, crufty stuff and pick up something that has some
buzz. Learn mobile, HTML5, a NoSQL technology, geolocation or something
involving video. (this list goes on, of course)

The reason why I suggest this is because it will make you stand out. People
have had a long time to learn Java and Perl and therefore lots of people
have it on their resume. These other technologies are cool and new and
people want to talk to someone who has had their hands in them.

There you have it, as always, I'm opinionated and not always right. Also, if
you're wanting to learn something and the only thing holding you back is you
need a web host, talk to me, I still have the free "web hosting lending
library" running where you can experiment with web stuff. It supports PHP,
Ruby on Rails, Django, MySQL and MongoDB for short-term projects.

[1] http://www.elance.com/
[2] http://www.odesk.com/
[3] http://99designs.com/

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin and twitter

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -Thomas Edison
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