[consulting] Purpose?

[netsperience]

  Jeff,

I have only recently joined this list. I agree with your observations:

> The recent thread has reminded me that I was going to ask something 
> long ago and forgot all about it: what is the intended purpose of this 
> list? I don't mean this to imply anything negative, facetious, etc. 
> I'm curious for two reasons. One is that I don't know whether it is 
> intended to be 'about' consulting or 'for' consulting.
> people need a place to bitch about their work and their clients that 
> is probably best not being the same place where potential clients are 
> looking for help, and it seems the list is bein used for both, which 
> causes me to wince quite often.
> The other is based on what I often see implied, that 'developer' and 
> 'consultant' are interchangeable terms, where being even a top 
> developer doesn't mean the person has 1 ounce of consulting skills 
> necessarily, nor that they do any consulting, and, likewise, a 
> consultant doesn't necessarily need to write one line of code.
The recent "lowball" "motorcycle site" discussion was triggered by a 
client posting a job with a low budget. I think we may have scared the 
client away, or perhaps he found a consultant. There is no way to know.

When I joined this list I thought it would be "about" consulting in all 
its aspects, including job offers, warnings about deadbeat clients, 
business tips, and above all a place for "consultants" to mingle. Some 
of the "developers" who contributed snarky comments to this discussion 
can indeed improve "consulting" skills and may reconsider that their 
hostile comments might scare away legitimate clients from this list 
and/or their own clientele.

I think if people want to "discuss" being a consultant or developer, 
there are ample channels (IRC, for example, or BOFs at Drupal events).

Truthfully, if this list becomes about one topic it will lose general 
interest.

Randall Goya (decibel.places) http://netsperience.org

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