Awesome Projects, Lifelong Colleagues: A Discussion for Finding Collaborators for Side Projects
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The document discusses the benefits and challenges of pursuing side projects, emphasizing the need for collaboration among like-minded individuals. It highlights the importance of building organizations that facilitate connections and support for those interested in working together on projects. The text advocates for creating systems that help match ideas, project needs, and skills to enhance creative cooperation and productivity.
Awesome Projects, Lifelong Colleagues: A Discussion for Finding Collaborators for Side Projects
- 1. Awesome Projects, Lifelong Colleagues A Discussions on Finding Collaborators for Side Projects David Koelle dmkoelle@gmail.com v1.0 July 20, 2015
- 2. Side Projects are Awesome! They give us a chance to: Create something new, cool, and interesting Work outside the constraints of the day job Learn and practice new skills Pursue an idea that can lead to a new business Make a positive change in people’s lives and a positive impact in the world
- 3. But Side Projects are Hard! Several challenges present hurdles to side projects: Hard to find time and energy after the day job May be hard to find space to work on project May need to find money to buy components Hard to find like-minded people to also dedicate their limited spare time to your cool ideas
- 4. The Maker Movement is Helping Incremental steps to making this work: Meetup groups help get people together Maker spaces provide space for large projects Kickstarter (etc.) helps projectnauts obtain funding App stores, self-publishing, open source licenses, Etsy, etc. help with distribution
- 5. But We’re Still Missing Something Big Specifically, people working together: Most projects on Kickstarter are 1 or 2-person efforts Mentorship is uncommon for side projects Meetups are often focused on presentations rather than working together productively Hackathons and Code Labs do not translate to collaboration after the event
- 6. Why is it Hard to Find Project People? Motivations, expectations, and communication Unless people are gathering specifically to work on projects together, that’s not why everyone is there We don’t know whether people are interested in working together on projects, or what they’re interested in We don’t know what level of commitment people can make to projects, even if they are interested We don’t have a way to know the depth and breadth of each other’s skills or interests
- 7. What if We Could Find Project People? Oh, the things we could do! We could be lifelong colleagues with awesome people in a way that transcends working at the same company We could learn from each other about things that we are so passionate about that we dedicate scarce free time to them We could work together to build something bigger than 1 or 2 people can build by themselves We can improve the creativity and growth of our projects by talking and sharing with others of a similar mindset
- 8. Awesome! How Do We Do It? Turning the dream into a reality: Establish organizations that focus on bringing together project-oriented people – Kickstarter for People Share the vision for working together in new ways to mutually build each other and our projects Create a system that lets us share and match our ideas, project needs, person qualifications, etc. Partner with Meetups and other communities and be the place where people go to find and build impactful projects