Hi guys, This is a proposal for an "informal" Debian support-for-hire co-op organization. The organization would be geared to service "incident" calls, received via phone, email, fax, etc. But once the initial referrals are made, there is no reason each consultant can't establish more of a 'clientele' style relationship with the individual clients. For starters, I think we can dispense with having centralized billing and much of the other stuff that a "formal" company would have. That can be added later if the thing is actually successful. Initially, I think we just need a unified marketing message, a single web page, and a structure for referring incoming calls to the individual consultants. We could have this up and operating tomorrow if there was enough support. It's that simple (I think). Here's a little plan: * Build a list of Debian consultants willing to participate. * Define the set of services we are going to provide - and tag a value on each of those. For starters, don't worry about markup for the central organization/dispatch. We could share the effort of making the web pages, and we could take turns answering the phones. - I'd suggest designating several classes of support: ie. (this is just an example 'rate schedule' - don't take it seriously) 'Basic 1' - installation support, hand-holding, this should be low cost, and the high-end consultants could steer clear of it - say $30US / hr (perhaps this could be bundled with CDs) 'Basic 2' - assistance with configuring specific packages $40US / hr 'Samba 1' - assistance with configuring Samba - $50 hr (only consultants with experience would do this work) 'DNS 1' - setting up DNS servers - $50/hr ... 'Kernel 3' - figuring out random Kernel crashes - possibly doing kernel hacking - $200/hr - Note that this is a lot different that Bruce was suggesting. Instead of guaranteeing problem resolution (which is risky, and his rates were too low, and not time based) - we'll just bill by the hour to start. - It's fairly important, I feel, to have the same set of rates for the same class of work (but everybody doesn't have to do all classes of work). The billing will be itemized based on the class of work. * Pick somebody to be the boss. Since we won't be incorporated, and no money will be changing hands initially, the role of the boss is just to coordinate things, and to have the final say on who is allowed to be part of the network. We need to be able to kick people out who aren't up to snuff, unfortunately. * Set up a schedule - each consultant would have to inform everybody when they are available to work - a week ahead of time. They will be required to set the time aside - ie. they must be able to handle calls referred to them, or they will be kicked out. When working, we should have an IRC channel and private mailing list so we can communicate back-and-forth. * Choose people to answer the phones. I'm willing to answer phones at my phone number from 10-4 Pacific Time. We should have multiple numbers that a potential customer can call (with the schedule on the website). There isn't an overwhelming need to set up a central phone number - and that wouldn't work well internationally anyways. With more people answering phones, we could have quite a range of overlapping time coverage. I've got voice mail on my phone too, so if I'm away from the phone (or on it) - people can be referred to another number. We should attempt to be fair in referring the calls, which I don't anticipate will be a big problem to start. I've got a fax line too (mgetty -> email with .g3 attachments). So I could forward faxes to everybody. * Make a web page, do some announcements, and get some links to the web page. * Money - client calls will come in, and they will be referred to the individual consultants. Each individual consultant will be responsible for establishing a contractual relationship with the client and doing their own billing. (relying on the standard rates) - once one consultant has established a contractual relationship with the client - that consultant can farm out work (sub-contract) to the other consultants in the co-op network - at his/her discretion. In order to provide unified billing, we'll do "adhoc" peer contractual relationships. - we can share forms, programs, contract forms etc. amongst ourselves so that we remain relatively consistent, and can share some of the work involved. That's about all I can think of for now. I must admit that this is totally biased towards the way I would like to work - I'm more keen to experiment with the concept (temporarily) rather than get involved in some big fancy corporate setup. Flame away... :-) Cheers, - Jim
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