sessions

As in independent software consultant, you need to be aware of intellectual property issues such as trademarks, copyrights, patents and trade secrets. Do you own your own work? Or is it work for hire? How do you protect yourself? These topics, along with independent contractor agreements, NDA’s and your questions will be discussed in this session.

Confused about how to price yourself as a freelancer? What’s too much? What’s too little? Brad Gilreath tackles common (and not so common) pricing problems freelancers face.

As an independent consultant it is very important to market your services and skills as a developer. One area that is often overlooked is publishing content on software development. There are numerous avenues where you can publish material. You can blog, write articles, write white papers or even write entire books. Each venue has unique characteristics some good some bad some ugly. Over the last 15+ years as an independent software developer I have done them all. Come to this session ready to learn and discuss the different aspects of publishing from the POV of a blogger, book author, article writer and magazine editor.

There’s tons of freelancing advice to be found on the intertubes. Some of it rings true, but a fair amount doesn’t apply to freelance programming — or even to freelancing in general. In this talk, we’ll dig into several popular misconceptions about freelancing to find the kernel of truth and hopefully get a laugh along the way. I’ve got a personal experience to go along with every misconception!

Online communities can be powerful network builders for freelancers. But, they are also personal spaces that are sensitive to outsiders trying to take advantage of their audience. In this session, we’ll discuss the right way to network via online communities and how to participate within them in order to establish yourself as a reliable member and, with that, a reliable business partner.

Much of our lives, especially as independents, is driven by our own actions. And all too often, by our inaction. Never rely on your next client to keep your skills up to date or to build your reputation. We’ll look at a number of techniques you can use to drive your skill set and build your reputation. Each technique will take you closer to where we all want to be: in a position of having options and in control of our lives.

Are you handling client communication with email, updating your clients’ sites with FTP, making manual backups when you think of it, and crossing your fingers that everything gets done and nothing breaks? I’ve been there, and I’m here to tell you: it doesn’t have to be that way. In this talk, you’ll learn how to incorporate the git version control system and a ticketing system into your workflow to bring sanity and peace of mind to your development process, and why you don’t want to work on any collaborative project without them.

Specifically, you’ll learn how to:

- track client requests in a ticketing system
- store step-by-step snapshots of your work that reference those requests
- streamline the process of deploying new code to a server
- rapidly roll back bad code
- identify the change that made your code break
- work on experimental changes without breaking your stable code