Add an eventSessions at SXSW Interactive 2011 about Freelance on Monday 14th March
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You Are The Gig Economy
by Julie Ruvolo and ingrid sanders
“No one I know has a full-time job anymore. They’ve got Gigs.” - Tina Brown, The Gig Economy (http://www.thedailybeast.com/blo...)
Depending on when you last watched Office Space, Lumbergh might be your idea of the quintessential boss from hell or evoke nostalgia for “when people had bosses.”
Welcome to the jobless, boss-less Gig Economy.
Where independent workers now make up 30% of the American workforce - freelancers, contractors, part-timers, self-employed, dabblers in a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
Where 75% of small businesses in the US are sole proprietorships – that’s 20 million businesses with no Lumbergh and no employees.
And where 75% of 2010’s college grads don’t have a job waiting for them on the other side of their Commencement Address.
Maybe we’re better off working for ourselves.
In his latest book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink argues that “extrinsic motivators” like bosses and bonuses are less effective than things that motivate us from the inside out: autonomy, mastery and purpose.
So what makes us tick when we don’t have a boss, an office, a time to show up at work, or even a paycheck?
Through the lenses of autonomy, mastery and purpose, we’ll talk with a panel of the nation’s leading thinkers on the freelance lifestyle and work productivity and argue whether we’re looking at a crippling, jobless future or the emergence of a better way to work.LEVEL: Beginner
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Abolish The Hourly: How Value Pricing Wins Clients
From an introduction to value pricing to case studies to client relationships, how value pricing can help to abolish the hourly and find a better way to business success, for you and for your clients.
Traditional business practice dictates that the way to bill your clients is to first figure out your costs by taking salaries + overhead + profit to figure out a billable rate, and multiply that by an estimate of the number of hours required to complete a project.
Now, what if basing your rates on the number of available labour hours isn’t an accurate representation of the way you work or the way to bring the best value to your clients? The old model is broken, and value pricing is where we need to shift the client/service provider relationship.
LEVEL: Beginner
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Switch: from Freelancer to Entrepreneur
So you’ve tumbled down the rabbit hole into the world of freelancing and you’re ready to make it a legit career so your friends stop thinking you’re unemployed. But how does it actually happen? Should you take the red pill... or the blue one? Do you have to grow a big agency or outsource work to India? Maybe neither. Designing a successful business takes vision, organization and communication mixed with grit and determination. And our panel guests are in the thick of it—building a business together and ready to share their successes and failures with you.
LEVEL: Intermediate
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Freelancers Are Slutty, But So Are You
by Shane Pearlman and Peter Chester
Freelancing is a lifestyle.
In this session we'll present an overview of the pros and cons of working with freelancers. We'll walk you through our systematic approach to finding, retaining, and coordinating freelance teams. We'll answer some of the basic questions about working with freelancers such as:
- When does it make sense to work with independent contractors?
- How do you maintain an enduring relationship with a freelancer?
- What are the traits of a successful freelancer?
And we'll cover some basic topics including:
- Lifestyle: Why people choose to be freelancers
- Freelancers are slutty, but so are you: How to approach independence.
- Match made in heaven: Pros and cons of working with Freelancers
- Long distance relationships: How to approach communication
- Take a trip to Hawaii: Keeping freelancers on your team
We run a team of highly skilled and inspired independent contractors doing UI, web design, development, and multimedia. We've been working freelance on large corporate projects for over 10 years. We founded Freelance Camp in 2008, leading to a global movement. We've won numerous Webby awards, work with the likes of SAP, MTV, AOL and dozens of other 3 letter acronyms.
LEVEL: Intermediate