OT: I'm thinking about moving from Rome to London in a couple of months. During the first months there I'd like to work part time as a programmer: I'm very experienced with Ruby on Rails and Javascript/CoffeeScript and I would like to see from the inside how it works in the London startup scene, while I also work on my side project for which later I'll be looking for investors.
Any suggestions about how to start looking for contract or temporary work while not residing in London? Of course I'm willing to travel to interview and/or make arrangements, but I can't leave my current job immediately.
I'm in a similar boat as you :) I'm from Slovenia and I've been searching for a full-time job from here. It really isn't a problem since most companies are doing phone/skype interviews these days. I'm actually coming to London today to do a couple of face-to-face interviews and I already have one offer. So really, the fact that you are in Italy shouldn't be a problem.
Depends, some companies responded in matter of hours, some in a couple of days. Some didn't respond at all (or they will eventually). So after that we usually setup a quick phone chat the same or next day. And if all went well we continued from there.
You really should first decide when you'll be moving. If it's in 3 months then I think it's a bit too soon to start searching. But once you do start searching things should start moving rather quickly. Just make sure you'll have the time to answer all those emails and calls :) And try to send a large batch of applications at once so you can have as many interviews at once when you'll come to London (it's not really cost effective to come just for one interview).
Hey Dan. Drop me an email (address in my profile). I'm looking for contract ruby folk at the moment and know quite a few others looking for contractors.
Really - my contacts in recruitment world say the contract market is dead in London ? Perm work is five times the volume and teams are all in house now? Am I wrong?
Very. I'm an inhouse recruiter myself however I used to work on the dark side as an agency recruiter. Contract work (particularly for rubyists) is still surpassing perm work.
I was at this event (the 'freelancer' in the front row getting picked on by Sanderson), it was brilliant. Big thank you to yourself and Steve for putting on such a good show.
Will you be reducing the involvement of sponsors now you're raising £3k per event?
What are the additional events and projects now in the pipeline as a result of the extra funds?
Having just got back from San Francisco and seeing a lot of the pay-it-forward culture in action, I'm glad there is a fee at it means that we're able to contribute to something that can help build something larger and be part of a difference in the London startup culture. So I'm really keen to hear about how those funds are now going to be invested to make that change happen.
Not at all. I think many of the sponsors are providing huge value to the community and I don't see much point in reducing their involvement. Another event that I am hoping organise very soon is a screening of The Startup Kids film. There is also a hackathon in the pipeline, though I am still working out some of the details.
I'll let Dmitri give his own response but one thing I will mention is the fact that the cost of putting on the event each month is in excess of £2k and that's not taking into account Dmitri's time & efforts (or mine for that matter).
Dmitiri's plans for improving the event are solid but it's not my place to reveal them.
I see first hand how much time and effort Dmitri puts into organising this event, and I can't imagine how he (or anyone) would be able to make this event sustainable without getting an income from it.
When you consider transaction fees, tax and expenses, Dmitri is being generous with his time.
I enjoyed the last one of these I went to, but it's not much of a networking event. You can get a bit of meet-and-greet in between the speaker talks, but everyone pretty much left after the last one, as the venue closed down. Anyone who wanted to network had to move on to a nearby pub, and few people made the effort, or knew where to go.
Several people have made the same comment and it's especially important for people who are new to the scene and don't know many people. It's something that I would definitely like to improve and welcome all suggestions. I'll post an update with pub details on the event page too.
I also attended some HN meetups in Munich and those worked very well. You show up, you talk to people. The organizers set aside a short time for anyone who wanted to talk about their project to do so, apart from that it was just a meetup, focused on the attendees rather than pre-prepared content.
Setting aside 10 slots of 30 seconds (or min) each to pitch to the room on what they are working on may help people connect and find like minded people? kind of like show and tell..
We've had someone travel from France in the past! You should have told us in advance and we could have reserved a prime seat right up at the front for you.
There are typically quite a few people from Brighton and Cambridge who come along. We usually finish at around 10pm so there is scope for getting the train home after.
The furthest that people have traveled just for the event (that I am aware of) is from Paris.
I'm unconvinced that Bristol (or any other region of the UK, especially those commutable to London) has the critical mass necessary to support one. Perhaps a worthwhile experiment though.
Well, there are two MS/.NET usergroups in Bristol, one of which has had 100+ people in attendance a couple of times and there a few other user groups in human factors and such.
London will always be the exception, but given the number of user groups already held in Bristol that manage to get around 50-100+ people in a month with ease I think that Bristol would be the natural choice outside of London.
Whether a HN meetup would be successful or not is another story. It'd be entirely down to who would choose to organise it and what they could offer to local HN members.
IIRC it was 15-20 in Songkick's original offices at the back of Spitalfields market (although physical size wise it was probably about the size of a living room), it frequently over-flowed into the corridor.
They used to make everyone introduce themselves at the start, modern HN meetups lack that sense of intimacy :)
Any suggestions about how to start looking for contract or temporary work while not residing in London? Of course I'm willing to travel to interview and/or make arrangements, but I can't leave my current job immediately.