I'm at a similar stage of gathering ideas. It seems that as software developers, we're at a unique point in history where an individual owning their own means of industrial-grade production is a possibility thanks to free software.
I come from a different angle as I was incredibly Liberal throughout my student years. But the working world shattered any illusions I had about achieving self-fulfillment as your typical software engineer.
You might be intrested in looking into Enspiral. They are a huge tech cooperative (~40 core members + ~100 associates) running out of New Zealand https://enspiral.com/ with some great ideas. They started out of individual freelancers grouping together to form an insurance fund and smooth out their incomes between contracts.
I've been thinking lately about how to initially build up a group's reputation and client pipeline. If you start with too many members without their own clients then I am not sure it would be sustainable. You could have initial capital investments from each member, but I'm less comfortable with that idea right now.
As for presenting, from time to time I will give web development workshops. I agree that presenting requires a disproportionate amount of time and energy but I find that it spices up my workload very nicely :)
I'm at a similar stage of gathering ideas. It seems that as software developers, we're at a unique point in history where an individual owning their own means of industrial-grade production is a possibility thanks to free software.
I come from a different angle as I was incredibly Liberal throughout my student years. But the working world shattered any illusions I had about achieving self-fulfillment as your typical software engineer.
You might be intrested in looking into Enspiral. They are a huge tech cooperative (~40 core members + ~100 associates) running out of New Zealand https://enspiral.com/ with some great ideas. They started out of individual freelancers grouping together to form an insurance fund and smooth out their incomes between contracts.
I've been thinking lately about how to initially build up a group's reputation and client pipeline. If you start with too many members without their own clients then I am not sure it would be sustainable. You could have initial capital investments from each member, but I'm less comfortable with that idea right now.
As for presenting, from time to time I will give web development workshops. I agree that presenting requires a disproportionate amount of time and energy but I find that it spices up my workload very nicely :)