One of the questions I am often asked when I meet fellow freelance developers is how do I find work? The answer is really simple: I don’t, work finds me!

This may just apply to Switzerland, the Geneva area, software development or me but I doubt it. I think it applies to any kind of freelance job, anywhere. And I also think this is hardly a secret :)

In order to have work find you, you need only one thing: a network of trust.

You need people you trust and who trust you. The trust factor here is important because you don’t need poisonous clients from hell, you need the best clients, those with the best projects and who actually pay the bills in time. And for a network to give you that there must be a safe and natural path leading the client to you.

Building a network

Building a network is not a matter of minutes and distributing name cards is only the beginning. It is about building relationships with people. Building trust among your network will be the subject of the next chapter, for now let’s see where you can find people to build your network.

First, you certainly already have a network. If you worked in the corporate world before being a freelancer it is composed of your former colleagues and bosses but also the people you were in school with. Some of them might become clients or referrals. Then you will need new friends, and the most important thing to make new friends is to meet new people. If you are the shy type then get over it or get back to corporate world.

To meet new people you need to find gatherings. Ask around you, use Google and social networks and find groups of professionals that gather regularly. Conferences are also good but you need to be able to follow up on the people you meet (you hardly build a trust relationship when you meet people once in a year). You can even build your own group if you are, say a Google AppEngine specialist but there is no local GAE users group. This is important: you need to meet people around topics that interest you! If you go to a RoR meetup thinking “I don’t care about RoR but if those guys have a Java project coming in they may refer me” then you are doing it wrong. Even if “those guys” get a Java project and cannot convince the client to switch to RoR, they won’t think about you because you were enable to connect with them during the meetup.

I will not discuss how to connect with people, there is no secret handshake and if you have relational issues may be you should consider working this first.

And then you will have to add your clients to your network. They are an important part of it because they have a unique point of view, they trusted you with their projects and they hopefully are more than happy with your work.

Another thing is that you will need your network to think about you. When the time comes, your name must be floating at the surface of their brain. With the advent of social networks this is something that has become relatively easy, so do not hesitate to use Facebook, Twitter et al. in addition to regular face to face meetings. Your network must hear about you, it must see your face and it must remember who you are. Obviously you need to stay relevant, you can share your passions and your wisdom but you also need to share useful professional information.

Building trust

This is the most difficult part, you must be recognised by your peers and be a point of reference for your clients. I only found one effective way to build trust (if there are others I will be happy to read about them in the comments) and this is to overdeliver.

For clients, overdelivering means exceeding their expectations. It can be in term of schedule, functionalities, quality or just being there when they need you. Or before they need you.

For fellow freelancers or colleagues it means sharing work and knowledge, helping them when they need help, without demanding or expecting anything in return. This can be done is several ways, participating in open source projects is one, giving presentations at meetups or speeches at conference are others.

If you think a project or client may be dubious do not refer it to someone else without the proper warnings. Likewise, do not send a trusting client to an unknown resource without the proper disclaimer. Never refer a client you would not take or a freelancer you would not hire.

Once enough people in your network trust you the network effect will kick in, some people will trust you just because others do and you will receive e-mails from people you don’t know who want to work with you.

And you? How do you find work?

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Since my LibraryThing application for Facebook is out it has clearly had a viral growth curve. So far there are only 435 users and every week I am looking for an inflection of this tendency. I know there will be one because there is a limited number of LibraryThing users on Facebook. My goal, right now, is to attract as many of them as possible on this application.

The next step will be to attract Facebook users to LibraryThing. But I know that for this I will need help from Tim Spalding and the LibraryThing team. I have always been grateful for their work but I must admit that I have been quite disappointed recently as I was trying to contact them and they constantly ignored me.

I am also thinking about open-sourcing the application, because I think it is both a good use case for people who are developing Python/Django applications on Google AppEngine and those who are developing for the Facebook platform. I still have to choose a license but the GNU Affero General Public License seems like a good match.

Anyway, if you love books, got plenty of them and want to share your readings, do not forget to give LibraryThing a try and once your are convinced, join the Facebook application, with this application you can:

• Add a tab and a box to your profile, listing your most recent books
• Choose the number of books to display in your profile tab
• Choose whether you want to display them with covers only or as a list which will include your ratings and reviews
• If you grant the application the right to publish to your stream it will publish books you add to LibraryThing on your wall
• It will also publish reviews as you write them on LibraryThing

You can also:

• Browse your Facebook friend’s books
• Find books on the search page
• Share a book you like or comment on it (those are Facebook only features and will not appear in LibraryThing)
• Add a book to your LibraryThing collection with a single click

Enjoy :)

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It is in version 0.5 and is provided by Sociable! a social media blog in spanish. Not everything is perfect but you can already see it in action here!

Bye bye Google Friend Connect…

Update: Version 0.7 is already out…

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Yesterday, Google and Facebook both launched their respective “connect” infrastructure. I received the Google mail announcement at 6pm and Facebook announced it on the developpers’ blog at 12pm. I actually had subscribed to receive news from Facebook Connect but never received any mail. It seems like Google has credit for the first move.

This morning, I started trying to add “Connect” features to this site…

Google Friend Connect

I started by adding the Google Friend Connect widget (it is still there).

It initially took me less than 5 minutes to setup my Google Friend Connect account and get working code for a widget to put in here. As easy as using Google AdSense, follow the wizard and you are done. It then took me 5 other minutes to tweak the site’s design.

10 minutes and every Google, Orkut or Plaxo user can register to this site and I can invite my friends on those platform to join me in. Problem is I do not use Orkut nor Plaxo and a very small amount of my friends actually have a Google account.

But they almost all have a Facebook account.

Facebook Connect

Then, I went to the Facebook Connect documentation and followed the instructions.

Instead of a wizard and files to download you have to follow instructions, create new files and copy/paste code. And then you can have a “Facebook Connect” button on your site. Nothing else. To do more you need to understand the Facebook platform, read the documentation and hand-code some FBML.

This is going to take me more than 10 minutes to be able to invite my friends here…

I guess the Google announcement forced them to release Facebook Connect with missing bits but there already seem to be rumors about a Connect plugin for WordPress. I think I can wait a week or two :)

The Winner

Facebook wins, my mother is on Facebook…

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Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born

The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats.

There is something coming, as opposed to Yeats I don’t think it will be the end of the civilization, but there is a war coming.

Weapons are ready and skirmishes have begun.

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Google Friend Connect lets you grow traffic by easily adding social features to your website. With just a few snippets of code, you get more people engaging more deeply with your site.

This is not a social network by itself, this is something that enables you to turn your own web site into a social network. I can’t wait to try it myself on this blog and build my own social network…

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Yesterday, inspired by Twitter, I setup a Skype public chat group for the company I currently work for. This morning I sent a mail to almost everyone and started to disseminate information about the group in the corporate wiki.

And almost nothing happened, only a few people showed up and no communication occurred. I am sure this a good idea, but I think something as to actually happen to demonstrate its usefulness, may be we need to bootstrap the flow by starting to push information instead of waiting for questions to come.

Yeah, exactly like micro-blogging on Twitter :)

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As far as finding a job/project is concerned do you think that having a lot of recommendations can be considered suspect?

What would be “too many” and can it vary depending on geography/culture?

This is the question I asked on the LinkedIn network and if you feel like sharing your thoughts about this then you can either comment this post or go to LinkedIn.

I am wondering because last Monday I asked the near-to-be-former colleagues I am connected to to endorse me on LinkedIn. And the result is pretty impressive with 17 recommendations so far and certainly more to come.

Only 8 of them are actually visible right now. Not being shown on my profile is not a mark of disregard, I really thank every people that took the time to write something for me, even the smallest blurb!

However, I decided to make a choice and display only recommendations from my managers, my closest co-workers and non-technical people.

I did this because I though I would be suspicious seeing a profile with a lot of recommendations. I might be biased, however. My father being a former cop in the French police I learned to be wary of anything unusual (this can be technically useful but is socially terrible).

Hence the question, any hint welcome :)

2008-04-11 Update: After 14 answers on LinkedIn I decided I will show all the recommendation I received.

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After 6 years in Odyssey (minus 6 months failing to build a product and 3 months escaping burnout in China) I am leaving…

Those interested will ask where do I go? Nowhere! I am going solo, freelance, whatever… I am going free!

And one of the first thing I will do is to attend Going-Solo, on the 16th of May, a conference held in Lausanne about being a Freelancer and organized by Stephanie Booth.

Stephanie, thank you for the perfect timing!

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• Bootstraping communication

I will not comment on the various speakers and themes (although I really liked Kevin Warwick’s and I have been left with a question) others have done that and they are much more gifted than I am in that area.

I just wanted to say a big “thank you” to the Lift team, the organization was great and this was an enjoyable experience.

Thank you all for your work, see you next year.

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