Dear all,
Through my activities as IT consultant and small business owner, I get to meet a large number of fellow SME owners. Almost all of them have the same need: a simple, efficient and extensible IT infrastructure that will not cost them an arm and a leg, either to install or to maintain. Currently, most of those people use illegal copies of M$ Windows, Office, SQL Server, etc. Some of them tried to purchase enterprise solutions from multinational vendors, only to find that the hidden costs of the TCO were unmanageable.
Whenever I talk to any of them about the concepts behind open source software, they immediately understand its benefits for their enterprise and are ready to give it a trial. However, their crucial question is: who will help us implement those open source systems? So far, I have found it very difficult to locate IT contractors willing to perform *paid* services on open source technologies. I am emphasizing the paid factor because with payment comes responsibility to perform.
I am suggesting to the EGLUG community to devote a section of the forum where SMEs can post project requests and where open source experts can propose their services and advertise their skills. I believe this matching will greatly encourage the adoption of FLOSS.
Karim
In a way....
Well what you're saying is completely true, but I don't think we need a forum section. There's never been any requests anyway. It can go to Miscellaneous.
Or perhaps, maybe a JOBS section ?? that would be more general.
BTW, it's FOSS not FLOSS :)
FOSS/FLOSS
FOSS == Free Open Source Software FLOSS == Free/Libre Open Source Software
The second acronym is more annoying but more descriptive.
--
what bout you ?
you say ypu are a business consultant and you know the needs why don't you start your own linux solutions and seel them
the best things in life are free --- so as myself
Business consulting
That's exactly what our company does. However, we specialize in a specific application domain, not in general Linux support.
How about your own graphic design company? Can you provide Linux services?
Yup
Ditto.
--
Employment vs. contracting
ramez.hanna wrote:
and YoussefAssad replied:
The fact that most IT companies are looking to hire contractors instead of full-time employees should be a indication as to where the industry is going. Maybe it has to do with the inherently project-oriented nature of the IT business. In any case, IT companies need to remain agile and avoid the huge overheads of a large base of full-time employees. Less full-time employment, in turn, means more IT contractors and entrepreneurs.
To cut a long story short, I think it is the IT community itself that has to get off its butt, find out what it is that the market needs, and organize its resources to perform a constructive role.
You're probably right
If we're going to sit around and wait for some commercial Linux-friendly entity to reach sufficient mass then we're going to be sitting around forever.
A contracting/consulting skillset hiring model fits the distributed nature of FLOSS better anyhow, in my opinion.
Given that the page kratib suggested will simply be a listing of who can do what (and possibly at what rates?) I don't think this is in any way a bad idea so long as we make it clear that EGLUG does not charge for this or benefit from this. We remain an unofficial entity.
So, you have my weight (for what it's worth) behind this initiative. Let's get a little more feedback from the community regarding this topic, and ideas regarding presentation of said page.
To reduce administrative overhead, I suggest we start out with a simple wiki page, possibly with a reasonably prominent link to the front page. I don't think it is currently feasible (or even logical) to do very much more than that; we don't want a full-blown resume section; KISS.
What does everyone think?
--
A contracting/consulting skillset hiring model
I fully support this idea. I don't think there is such a database/website in Egypt that has that kind of information (i.e. who can do what). As for the administration and presentation, can you please elaborate on how a wiki-style page could be used in this context? Cheers.
Abdel-Karim