From my home wifi, to airport seatac wifi, to SFO airport wifi, to Gogo InFlight, Boingo as backup, to rail Wifi on the BART…
Convince me that I need AT&T.
I’ve been without my phone for several weeks. Other than people asking me why I’m not using my other number, and me not being the best atreturning voicemails (same as always), nobody has noticed. I have an iPhone and use iMessage with friends. I use Google Voice with others. I’m covered.
I’m actually better now at returning calls than I was before. Google Voice lets you READ your voicemails. I know how to prioritize them. They may have spelling errors or some incorrect words, but you get the gist and at the very least a quick laugh.
I never answer my incoming calls anyway. Not usually. Everything I do work-wise is batched and scheduled. Plus, now you can carry around Wifi devices like Roku, Clearwire, and those from AT&T and Verizon. There are also a bunch of other options if you look hard enough.
“What about an emergency?” I hear you say. What did we do 10 or 20 years ago? We found a way to contact the people we needed. Texting with a cell phone can actually create an emergency! Learning to be patient and flexible goes a long way.
Not having a phone can actually help you manage your schedule more intentionally. And it can even help you calm your nerves!
Here’s a hint: It’s not the United States. It’s not the UK.
Give up?
It’s Eastern Europe! Eastern Europe is predicted to be the next big source of tech talent.
This may not surprise you if you’ve worked in startups who have outsourced tech talent to any extent. They’ll tell you that the best talent comes from Eastern Europe. Even Victoria Ransom of Wildfire Interactive started her Silicon Valley VC-backed company with two Engineers from Estonia. Coincidentally, Estonia is ranked number 1 for the share of students expecting to go into a science career by the age of 30.
Here’s a piece of Victoria’s story of using workers from Eastern Europe, from her interview with Mixergy:
What we did though is we found some very small teams. Our first team of developers were in Estonia. It was a team of two guys. So we were dealing right with the developers themselves. And we were able to get very high caliber developers at a price that you could never have got in the US. Having said that, it was still more expensive than we probably would’ve got if we’d gone with an outsourcing firm. So we did pay for high talent.
I’d say that’s a key learning. Don’t skim on your development costs because you can end, it can end up costing you a lot more if you have an ineffective or inefficient developer.
But the other challenge is we found these two guys, I believe it was — giving away some secrets here — but it was on a website called Working With Rails, which I’m sure others have looked at. It’s a great Ruby on Rails site where you can find different developers and see how they’re ranked by their community, their peers. But nevertheless we found these two guys in Estonia who we never met, and we’re not developers ourselves, so how could we know that the code they were producing was good? So what we actually did is — we were in Boston at the time — we found a local developer, someone we could get to know in person so that we could get very comfortable with him. And we had him not code for us, but just take a look at the code that these two guys in Estonia were producing for us in order to just…
You know, we could judge the end product, but what about what was under the product. The last thing we wanted to do was just create a product that was just a mess underneath. So this guy worked with us for about six weeks just looking over the code. These guys were producing it and the honest truth is, after a little while, he said you know what, these guys are brilliant; they’re even better than me, don’t worry about it.
And we worked with those guys now I guess it’s been two and a half years, but it’s been fantastic. They’re a core part of our team and then we were able to find other developers overseas to work with. But you know, that’s how we did it. Neither of us, that’s how we did it in a cost effective way without having any needs for a developer background ourselves.
This is all great advice, and I’m meeting more and more awesome tech talent from Eastern European countries as I travel. So mark my words: The best tech talent that will come out in the next few years will all be from Eastern Europe. But we’ll see what happens!
I’ve been using FreeConferenceCall.com and FreeConferencing.com to connect remotely with clients. I have been happy with my service from FreeConferencing and had switched from Webex after testing it.
But, I was wondering how FreeConferencing was planning to monetize with all calls and conferences being free and zero advertising… but today I found out how – with a sister company called StartMeeting. A premium service for audio and web conferencing. I haven’t checked it out yet but I am confident that, based on their track record with me, it will deliver. I’ll let them tell you about it below. If anyone has experience with StartMeeting, can you share your experience?
Premium Services from FreeConferenceCall.com
It Took a Conference Calling Company to Get Screen Sharing Right: StartMeeting Offers Conference Calls or Conference Calls with Screen Sharing
FreeConferenceCall.com has launched a sister company, StartMeeting, to allow you to Share Better at a fraction of the cost! StartMeeting is a new audio and web conferencing service that incorporates state-of-the-art features including screen sharing; easy-to-use meeting recording; and a customizable online Meeting Wall.StartMeeting is offering customers the audio and web service for significantly less than similar services. Prices for screen sharing start at $19.95 per month for a 50 participant capacity. This is compared to $39 for 15 participants at GoToMeeting and $49 for 25 participants at WebEx.For more information, visit www.StartMeeting.com
Features:
Cloud-Based Recording: User-friendly simultaneous recording of screen sharing and audio meetings, and files can be shared via Facebook and other platforms (Windows and Mac).
Synchronized Audio Conferencing: Reservationless calls include toll, toll-free, and an integrated high-definition VoIP platform — all with a dedicated access number.
Dedicated Meeting Credentials: Unlike some other audio/web services, hosts are given exclusive credentials to set up their meetings that never change.
Screen Sharing: Unlimited screen sharing of content. Subscriptions are offered with 50, 200, 500, and 1,000 participant capacities.
Meeting Wall: Customize it with colors, logos, profile pictures, and upload files or links that support the online meeting (without emailing the documents to participants).
Audio Web Controls: Mute, lock, identify or disconnect a caller; enter lecture mode (one-way communication); and hold Q&A Sessions with participants.
Enhanced Audio Features: Customize hold music and a greeting for participants entering the conference.
