I went to barcampnfp on Friday and – as usually happens at these kinds of things – what I got most from the day was meeting up with friends old and new and just talking about what it is to be working in this sector. We all sit at our desks every day, working hard, with little opportunity to bounce ideas off of others.
One of the tech sessions that really got me thinking was on Google plus and we had a hangout with other npf voice people from around the world.
I had an idea about combining these two things – the value of spending time with other freelancers and trying out Google plus hangouts as a learning exercise.
So… I’m scheduling a hangout for next week and here are the details:
Who is it for?
Although everyone is of course welcome, the idea is that it is very much for freelancers working with charities (comm groups, CICs, networks etc, you know who I mean).
The sense from talking to others was that it would be more valuable to focus on specific themes around the issue of freelancing (costing, agreeing contracts, project planning, time management etc) rather than specifically about technology… although I’m sure that’ll creep in!
When is it?
Friday 24th February (next Friday) at 11:00am (UK time) until about 12:00pm I guess.
Where is it?
I’ll start the hangout from my Google+ page gplus.to/LouiseBrown. I’m new to using hangouts so there might be an easier way of doing this. I know you can schedule a hangout if you make it open to everyone but I’d rather the only people that found it were specifically looking for it. If you know of another way of doing in then please leave a comment below.
Using the hangout with extras feature I can give it a name so I’ll call it “Charity freelancers virtual meetup”.
Do feel free to add me to your circles and then I know you’re there, I’ve set up a freelancers circle to try and capture everyone that showed an interest in this.
[ETA - apparently you can have a max of 10 people taking part in a hangout, anyone got thoughts on how to include more?]
What’s the theme?
Well the one thing that always comes up is around pricing. How do you decide what your rate is? How do you work out how much you need to bring in? How do you negotiate costs? What tasks should you be charging for and what should you do for free? Is it OK to charge different prices for different clients? I hope that sounds of interest to people.
Even if you don’t particularly want to talk about any of these things please do still pop by to meet the community of charity freelancers out there.
What is my role in all of this?
I am just the person who had the idea but I don’t by any means have the answers. Do please join in and take control if you feel you have something to say.
I hope to see at least one other of you on Friday!
This is a great idea Louise – definitely interested in this
Looks like you’ll have a big potential audience! I think Hangouts are the one really good thing that’s come out of G+ and I like seeing people explore their potential. As a Freelancer who works from home on my own a lot I wonder if it could be a way for me to have some people around me to socialise and have some banter with perhaps by having a scheduled “hangout time”. (As it is my wife’s, who’s on maternity and my 11-week old son keep me entertained enough).
Hangouts are limited to 10 people in terms of interactivity but there are some features, not available to everyone, that let you “broadcast” hangouts. I found this article: http://google-plus.com/3587/google-hangouts-on-air-a-live-broadcast-feature-with-recording-to-youtube-launched-for-some-users/
There’s also an interesting article about using hangouts to host a press conference on the FairSay blog (http://fairsay.com/blog/using-a-google-hangout-for-an-online-press-conference-1), but they use Hangouts for the first ten and a UStream broadcast for everyone else – not something that would work with a discussion-type event.
Hoping I get in early then!
Thanks for those links I’ll check them out. Yes, I hadn’t realised it was limited to 10 but maybe if ours is popular someone else can start a hangout for the rest!
As I said in the blog, it’s about trying things out so let’s just give it a go!
Hi Louise, how did your google plus hangout go? I’d be really interested to hear your experiences as this is something we’re looking at currently. We’ve just launched a website for event professionals, all about technologies in events, and I was thinking about writing a feature on how you could use hangouts as a virtual meeting environment and what the pros and cons are. It would be great to get some experience from somone who has done this first hand – fancy writing a guest blog for us? http://www.events-guru.co.uk
Heidi
Hello Heidi, thanks for your comment. You can read all about how the hangout went in my follow up blog post http://louisebrown.org.uk/2012/02/29/hanging-out-is-where-its-at/.
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