Peter Chester

I’ve finally gotten around to generalizing our contract to share with our community. Please be advised that if you use this template, you are using it at your own risk and that we are not responsible for your use of our contract. Also please take it to your lawyer and have it reviewed before you use it (and feel free to let us know if you have any suggestions for improving ours)

Download the Shane & Peter Client Contract…

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The Opportunity

We’ve just landed a pretty sweet gig. We’re looking for a AJAX / JSON developer to join our team on a project for the next 2 months starting now. Help build a high profile full-scale Wordpress based site by creating a dynamic interface using the APIs of Yelp, Amazon, Eventful, blip.tv, Wordpress, and bbPress.
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The Opportunity

We’ve just landed a pretty sweet gig. We’re looking for a Wordpress Master to join our team on a project for the next 2 months starting now. Help build a high profile full-scale Wordpress / bbPress site with elements from various 3rd party web applications.
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As fun as it can be to let a project drag on for eternity, and as much as I thoroughly enjoy working for free, one of the best things I can do for my relationship with my client is to define a clear end point for the project. I need sign off.

The problem, is how do I terminate a project in such a way as to strengthen my ongoing relationship? Continue Reading »

Lately we have been investing a lot of time and energy into sproutwire.com instead of sales. Meanwhile, our team has often been idle, developing their side projects, as we hunt for work. One great benefit and risk of working with independent contractors is that they are required to have other sources of income. This is great because it means we are not responsible for keeping our team working full time, but it is dangerous because it can easily lead to attrition. Eventually we all need to get paid. So how do we manage to keep together?
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One of the great challenges of working with a team of remote independent contractors is that there is no central office. People often say that by working with a remote team that is spread halfway across the globe, we are essentially missing hallway chatter. In other words, we’re missing a bond because we don’t run into each other and chat about things on a daily basis.

Since we don’t have a central office, we’ve decided to try a strategy of meeting with some of our most active team for a week in a Casa de Mar, a tropical resort in El Salvador (more photos to be uploaded when we get home and have a better connection). So far, I must say, the results have been spectacular (why don’t we have all our meetings in tropical resorts?)!

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I’m going to Germany for Christmas!!! Or so I thought, until my car was broken into at a lunch stop on the way to the airport. Grabbing my backpack through the smashed window, the thief made off with my laptop as well as our passports and Lindsey’s green card. Having no passports, we were forced to cancel the trip.

After the initial shock, I thought about it and realized, as long as my identity is not stolen, this really isn’t that big a deal. The laptop is replaceable and was insured. The data was backed up the night before. I had carefully removed my credit cards from the backpack the night before. And frankly, although Germany would have been fun, it wouldn’t really have been a vacation, it would have been an exhausting gauntlet of feasts with German relatives.

As it turns out the thief left the bag and passports sans gear on the street for the police to pick up. We received a call the next day and gleefully picked up our travel docs and otherwise empty backpack.

What this got me thinking about more than anything is the importance of being prepared. Do you have backups? Do you have insurance? Do you have a contract? Are you keeping good books?

I liken this to defensive driving (not to be confused with slow neurotic driving). It behooves us to beware of potential pitfalls so that we can avoid them. You’ll never be able to prevent all bad things, but you can avoid a lot of them just by trying.
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Wow. I’m hosed!

I spent the last 6 days phonecall-coding-QAing-designing-fatigueing. I probably gained a few pounds. Think i may have lost some eye sight. Definitely got some gray hairs. After a week like that, I’m sitting here trying to remember why I wanted to work independently in the first place.
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I’m taking a scuba class right now. One of the primary laws of scuba diving is, “Never hold your breath”. This is because it only takes very small variations in pressure to collapse your lungs.

I’ve been told more than once, by friends, family, and clients that I’m not responsive enough. This has always been a challenge, as my nature is to wait until i can formulate the right response. However, I rarely end up with enough time to think through the perfect answer. So I hold my breath and hope that i can get back to them soon.

The problem here is one of managing expectations. For example…

Client: Peter, could you please tell me what it would take to do XYZ?
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I’ve always thought it was ironic when smokers “go out for a breath of fresh air”.

Recently, I found myself sympathizing with the plight of the proverbial smoker when I came under heavy fire from my friends for answering my iPhone email in front of them. So I left the company of friends to go outside and communicate with people by myself.

Having skipped many of Shane’s important emails in my attempts to skim read, I came to realize that I need a better system for checking my email in social settings. Checking my email while in the presence of my friends, my family, or especially my wife is a great way to misread emails AND piss off the people I’m with. It’s like missing two birds with one stone.
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