 session and there's no point in me rabbiting on. So first off is Karmie Meias who will talk about own your own journey in a tech skill roller coaster. Big round of applause. So my name is Karmie Meias. I'm a freelance web developer and today I want to talk about how I learn to embrace change and how I keep up or try to keep up with technology. We all know that technology does not stand still. There's always changes in software, hardware, there's different ways of doing things. Change is part of technologies DNA but change can also be scary. The pressure to keep up and stay relevant can make us feel unsafe and stressed. At the same time change can also be an opportunity for improvement. It could be exciting and thrilling. It can make us work better and our life easier. So there's different ways of looking at the same thing and this change of perspective is something we can learn. In my case I like to think of a career in tech as a long-distance track. First you love computers and technology and you decide to work in IT. Then you decide you do your research, you plan your route, you decide what you need to learn and you do some research on courses and perhaps you want to do a boot camp or do a degree. Then you actually do your training and you get your first job in IT or your first project with the thing that you just learned. That is just the beginning of your journey. Now when you've got your basic training then all you need to do is keep up and keep pace. Before I continue I would like to tell you a little bit about my own journey. When I started I said I'm a web developer but I haven't always been one. My first job in IT was as a PC maintenance teacher. Then I worked as a desktop support and then I moved on to network support. Then a lot of the things I learned then are not relevant for what I do now but the logical thinking and the troubleshooting, the concepts and skills I learned then helped me learn the things I need for my current job. These are some of the things I've learned in the past three years as a web developer. So quite a lot. Some of it I only needed for a particular project or the things I use all the time or very often. Some of them I only just now getting into. So how is it done? First thing to do is decide where you want to go and do some research about how to get there. For that you can use Google, you can compare courses, you can compare fine colleges, you can check syllabus and prices but one thing that I've also found very useful is to talk to people. There'll be people if you go to meetups and conferences there'll be people there who are already doing what you would like to do. So talk to them, ask them how they got started, what resources work for them and then you can use social media to stay up to date with developments and also to thank those people who gave you their time. After you've got the information you can start your training so you join the course or you join a degree, you're ready for for studying but it's quite intense especially if you are working at the same time. So you need to make learning part of your routine. First of all it's quite a good to set the time perhaps every day or every week before going to work or in the evening when the children have gone to bed. It's quite important I think to involve the people you live with because any changes in your routine will affect their routine and so they they they need to be involved with what you're doing. Also it is important I think to keep a balance between theory and practice. You may be doing a structured course and there's already a list of things that they're covering but if you don't practice what the theory then it's a lot harder to retain the knowledge, the new concepts and also I found it's quite important for at least for me to mix the media. So if I'm doing an online course I'm also perhaps reinforcing a concept I didn't understand with books or I go to a talk on the thing and perhaps ask questions to the speaker. And also it's important to persist not to not to lose track of what you're wanting to achieve. In my case it helps me I'm quite square so it helps me set clear deadlines for for every week what I want to learn and which exact concepts or which things I'm going to be covering every week or every month. At the same time my own deadlines are flexible so before I've learned something I don't know how long it's going to take me to understand it. So it's all an iterative process and a refining process. And as I said before it helps me understand something better if I also apply it straight away. For example if I've learned something new I then try to implement it in an ongoing customer project and if that's not possible then I come up with some exercise or side project because it just helps me understand things better. It's not always going to be straightforward there's going to be moments where you think are really struggling with these I just never gonna get it it's all it's all normal because there's all going to be also other moments when you really get it and then it's just going to be a boost for your confidence. So this all these ups and downs are always normal just make room for them. Try to stay positive and keep the vision why are you doing this why are you learning these things is perhaps because you want to be better at your job or perhaps because you want to get into this other field. Be kind to yourself remember that this is normal to not always get everything straight away perhaps some concepts will take you longer than others that's all normal and remember to also enjoy what you're doing. Don't think of it just as a struggle and also remember to keep time allow time to switch off and rest. In the end you will finish your course you will get your first job in IT or your first project where you can apply the new thing you've learned but learning does not stop here. This is the technology will continue changing the software will continue evolving the everything is just a process is not an at the end is just a start and remember that nothing we do is in isolation so don't stop going to the meetups and conferences or participating in forums after you've learned what you needed to know. There'll be other people who will be just starting and what you've been through will help them in their way so that's it I just wanted to say and remember to love what you're doing as well. Thank you very much Carl May next up is sorry I'm in the way Francesco Canovie speaking about managing remote small teams without going crazy. Thank you. Okay hi everybody welcome to my lightning talk. Today I'm going to talk to you about my project management management framework that allows me to manage multiple projects at the same time with my remote team while trying to maintain a reasonable mental health. Is there here someone that is starting a team as a project manager or already works in a team? Okay so okay I want to tell you that I am not here to teach you something I am I'm here to only to share my experience to you because there are miracle receipts and I don't expect that my method would work for everyone but I hope to share something that will inspire you and hopefully help you improve your way very own method. Okay my name is Francesco I am a little bit of background. I am the founder of a web agency and it's called Black Studio and I set up it in 2002. I am from Italy and I live and I work in a very small town in the north part of Italy it's called Carpinati it's near Reggio Emilia the home of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and I don't know if someone likes it. Carpinati is not really famous for for technology. It's a nice place if you like mountains or green fields or medieval castles Parmigiano Reggiano cheese as I told you before and kettles but as you might imagine this is not an ideal place to set up a web agency and there aren't many engineers around and designers as well and cows are not good at coding so remote collaborations what were not an option for me was a really a core necessity especially in 2002 when remote teams were much less common than in these days and it was also for me it was a choice lifestyle choice because I didn't want to move to a bigger city to make my job so let's go straight to the point what do I mean for a small team according to Jeff Satterland the inventor of the scrum system seven people plus or minus three is the ideal size to maximize the effectiveness of a team currently at the studio we are eight people how many projects can such a team manage at the same time well in an ideal world I will recommend not to manage multiple projects at the same time at the studio at this very moment we have more than 20 active projects they are not all working at the same pace and they cover a huge spinal sizes but yes this is a pretty big number though having so many open projects might seems like a project management failure in the real world this is very common in fact it's not it's not always possible to close a project before starting on another because clients could be our responsive and the scope of the project could change during the development phase and and dilate time so I decided that instead of trying to force a project to its end before starting on another it might be better to follow the flow okay and learn to manage multiple projects at the same time of course this needs a lot of discipline and so how I do that I basically use a 10 points framework the first it seems obvious but it's not carefully select your team members because remote work working is not for everyone the most important skill for everyone in your team is communication make sure to test your candidates not not only because they are great engineers or great designer but because they are great at communicate with you a great engineer or designer that cannot communicate with you efficiently I might not be a great asset for your company then I set up a central point for tasks in information distributed because because they don't want that people is craving for information they have to know where the information are so and make this central point accessible to all team members we do this for every project and every team member can see tasks assigned to other team members black in studio we use as Anna which is a pretty popular project management software but you can use try low base camp or whichever software we are comfortable with in as Anna we plan least and assign tasks to all the team member but we also link the external documents that make up the core of the project as you can see those are some links of our documents for example the contractor a reference document it's a com document made in Google Docs with all the details of the project and then also client reference which is a Google Docs document shared with the client in case we need it to share information with the client so and then I set up a share Google Drive folder and you can also use one drive or Dropbox and we put every needed opportunity in there we named the folder with the name of the project so anyone can implicitly know where to find it it seems obvious but if the project implies core development a set up a collaboration environment like it we use GitLab but you can use GitHub and so forth ok now a central part it's time to start listing tasks and assigning them to all the team this is a very important part of the project management because the problem I've seen over over again is that project managers have difficulty managing the workload of every single member so we don't work but we don't work by the hour for clients we usually work by the project so every project needs to be estimated at once my method is very simple I set a time estimate for every task in the project backlog I split tasks that need more than four hour in multiple parts to avoid some mistakes in estimate we tried in the past to track tasks with time tracking tools like for example Arvest or Toggle but I soon discovered that it was too demanding for the team members to manage this approach tracking error were too much frequent plus clients want to determine the needed budget in advance and they are not likely to pay exposed so we prefer now to estimate in advance and team members can give me a feedback if I made some relevant to estimate mistakes so I can take it into account for future estimations we work in weekly slots so every full-time team member independently of the single project is assigned a maximum of 30 hour of tasks every week all assigned tasks have to be completed by the following Friday so it's a because we call it a weekly slot all the members usually work on multiple projects at the same time but they always respect the 30 hour per week workload limit and as full-time in member works 40 hours a week it means that the remaining 10 hours are left as a buffer to absorb time estimate error or unexpected issues we use a project chat room because a synchronous communication between the team members is maintained in the Zana but for synchronous communication we create a project chat room in Skype you can use you can use a Slack if you prefer but we prefer Skype because we already use it for clients and since it is more widely adopted and we want to use at least amount of tools as possible don't impose your methodology to clients communicate with the clients in a way that they are comfortable with don't try to embark them using as Anna like like you do clients don't want to adapt to you so it's up to the project manager to track every request from the clients in the Zana communicate with email the phone whatever you want and the whatever the client is comfortable with meetings are planned in a calendar because since in a Zana we work on a weekly slot every task is due for the next Friday so but meets needs to meet meetings needs to be done at us on a certain day and a certain time so I put them in a shared Google calendar and everything every team member so can have a clear idea of the meeting plan for the week build a knowledge base a knowledge base is a place where a team can find pieces of pieces of information about frequently needed topics so this is a really useful because once maintaining the team members can self-serve and prevent a lot of time losses due to asking and answering all the same questions of the time and lastly create procedures for repetitive tasks we have a procedure for a website kickoff checklist for our website publication a CIO ID procedure and so forth don't try and wait the wheel every time oh this is a scheme where you can visualize the central role of the task manager and all the documents and how assets as you can see we don't use many tools but it's enough for us so this is a 10-point summary of what I told you if you're interested you can find it on my website as well as the slides I am also available for discussion there are my contacts and if you're interested we are also hiring thank you thank you very much Francesco right last talk is Steve Folland whose talk is Freelancers don't freak out so last time today big round of applause don't freak out don't freak um cool thanks very much so yes my name is Steve Folland and I'm well I'm a freelance video and audio person but I also run a website being freelance.com thank you uh which uh the main thing to that is the podcast every week I chat to a different freelancer about their story about their experience and they share their insights so we've spoken to over 100 people now 124th episode went out today I think it was so I thought what I do is share some of their tips not really mine uh in that it might help you on your freelance uh journey or if you end up being freelance as well and the first one is well it could almost be like a mantra it's kind of like poetic in its brevity the first one is don't freak out because there are loads of times when you might freak out when you're a freelancer like when you don't have any work when you have too much work when your invoices haven't been paid when it's your tax return the first ever time you've done a self-assessment uh the second time you do a self-assessment the third time don't freak out trust yourself that it will be okay by the way I should say for the benefit of the people who gave these quotes that the images used in this presentation are not them especially for Louise's benefit uh if she ever sees this my second favorite quote possibly was this one now Fraser wasn't saying that you have to be unpleasant uh he's a thoroughly nice chap but this is more about the uh potential for people to take advantage of you when some clients who aren't quite as nice as you are don't pay you it can be easy just to phone them up and they say oh do you know what we'll pay you sorry the print uh what is it invoice run is just gone we'll pay whatever that is we'll um we'll pay you next week I promise it'll be done at that point don't be nice about it be persistent about it you've done the work so make sure that you get paid for it so yeah just be persistent um because nice guys get paid last because ultimately you're running a business when you're a freelancer you might get into it because you're a passionate developer or the designer illustrator I've spoken to lots of different type of freelancer but you have to take it seriously uh in order to survive know your finances and understand them even if you get a bookkeeper or an accountant and you I really should have done that before I did um even if you do that you should still try and understand where the money's going um what subscriptions you've got uh where your profit margins are where where the most profitable things that you do are and time track always this was Timmy's advice uh this was less about um like quote you know like charging people per hour it was more about the fact that actually on the next project you can look back at all of that time that you've decided to track and therefore better gauge what the next project is going to be just like Francesco was just talking about Sarah said you have to value yourself sometimes you can really start to doubt yourself especially when you're working by yourself and you're the only person so value yourself in fact I um I often ask well in fact I always ask every guest on the podcast if you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance what would that be and Stephanie said I'd tell my younger self I'm worth double somebody said that in this room earlier on as well about doubling what you're charging so it's worth thinking about this one is more about marketing though because that's the other thing remember I said you're a business as a freelancer there's no good just being the best at what you do you have to make sure other people realise you're the best at what you do so start putting yourself out there in whichever way you're comfortable with be it videos or blog posts or meeting people with your portfolio don't just show work that you've done show work that you want to do in the future because we all take gigs where you know it's maybe not the best thing in the world but we've got bills to pay this um this is what Sarah said but quite a few people have said this maybe um maybe they're only putting on their portfolio what they want to do in the future and that can also mean um creating side projects or opportunities like for charities for example where you create the work that you want to be known for and share it because of that even if you haven't been paid to do it yet Ran who was from Israel said this I think he'd like to eat lunch Ran he had a lot of lunches but he made a lot of friends and he has a very successful business this was his way to do marketing because ultimately people remember people people buy from people and the more in fact I've heard this the last two talks both said this all about meeting people and getting to know those people is also really important so if you build really important relationships with them not just clients either um just to underline this point there's another one just keep meeting people um Matt pointed out that this was a snowball effect as well so when you start out in your career maybe you don't know that many people and it can feel really tough but just keep believing in it keep going out there meeting more people and word will spread about what good stuff you're doing but it's not just about the work that you do but also like in this environment meeting other people doing similar things to what you're doing because other three answers aren't the enemy there's enough work to go around so don't think about other people as competition I remember going to a networking event once and the first person I met was also a video free lunch and I was like man like all these people I wanted to work with and you're here too utter nonsense he and I have become good friends he's hired me about three times I've hired him about seven times there's enough work to go around not only that but when we meet up for coffee we can also share the projects where we're going on the problems that we're going through so just keep meeting people and if you don't find a meet-up to go to maybe start one if you live somewhere where there isn't something happening same goes for co-working spaces as well if it isn't a co-working space near you maybe think about starting one big organisations pay a lot of money in order to build their brand to have an identity to build their voice but you have been building your voice since you were a kid and this was kind of what Paddy was about as a freelancer you are your best kind of your best marketing really the real you so be yourself and celebrate that when I think of all the people I've spoken to I remember the ones who fly helicopters tell me about their veganism their kids their dogs the fact they played a piano whatever it might be be yourself actually speaking of the person who flies helicopters that was Rachel Ingram um she schedules life first so she puts in when she's going to fly her helicopter she puts in the fact that she volunteers for um for guide dogs for the blind on a Friday um kind of jealous of her life in many ways but for me that might mean um putting in when I'm going to meet a friend for lunch or when I'm going to go for a run not that I particularly like to so then I'll also schedule time to go and have some cake but schedule life first because otherwise work can fill all of your time and that's not healthy for anyone this one is going to be the opening song in being freelance and musical you can sing that along in your head right now if you like I'll save you from it though um this is really about working smarter systems think about your processes think about the way that you can work best through everything that you do bit like Francesca was just talking about so I won't dwell on it too much um Paul Boag who's a very smart chap said this to me this is his way of getting things done and actually whilst I do often work at the weekend I agree with this in that whenever I set myself constraints like I know I've got to pick the kids up at 3 30 or I know I'm not going to be working on Sunday because I'm here I actually end up getting more done because I have less time available so set yourself constraints don't let being freelance fill all of your time and stop being so available don't always answer your phone don't always reply to that email and learn to say no because not every opportunity is a good opportunity and when you say yes to everything means that you can't take on that next opportunity comes along or that next slice of cake with a friend or that next helicopter ride on the nice day and back to Sarah who again said what do you have to lose so if you walk into that networking event as you think about that client who asked you to do something that you're not quite comfortable about when you think about signing up to stand in front of a stage of people a WordPress event on the Sunday in April ask yourself what do you have to lose and remember the three keywords don't freak out thank you very much you can hear lots of quotes at beingfreelance.com and the podcast thank you sorry can I ask Francesco and Callme to come back up and Steve to stay up here just if anybody's got we've got I think we've got a few minutes for questions I think yeah we've got a few minutes for questions so if anybody has got any questions to any of the speakers yes I'll yeah there's a mic coming down yeah it's for Francesco you said when hiring people that are working remotely can you hear me that choose people who are good at communication skills how do you go about that yourself because you know not choose communication over technical and I agree I agree but how do you test that before hiring them we have an embarking process has a trial period yeah for first we make a train where we explain this kind of method so we want this is the first thing that we want that people working with us know and then we try for one month usually thanks so sorry I keep looking around does anybody else got any questions for any of the speakers that's a question just there this one's for Steve I just wondered if you had any tips for going from full-time into freelance um yeah well lots of my guests have done it on the side so that's that's one key thing so maybe they've then built up a bank of money to like a buffer of money I didn't do that myself and it was stupid so if you've got the time available then do that also by working on the side like in the evenings you'll start to build up your portfolio your confidence potential clients and then start to get out and put the word out there on the side but um like if you listen to lots of the guests I always ask them like how they got started and how they find their first clients but um I think if you really want to do it then eventually you'll feel confident to take the jump but remember that everybody always thinks that they're not ready so eventually just do it thank you very much uh there's another question there in the middle Hi Francesco um you were talking about remote teams and how do you cope with different time zones do you do you have people in different time zones if they're working on projects together and the time zones are vastly different do you stipulate that they have to have certain hours together for the project chat in Skype or how do you cope with that please we try to communicate as as much as possible asynchronously but actually we have to meet sometimes on Skype so we we need to agree for 20 or three minutes a week for a for a call together yes but actually we in fact currently we are all in the in the same time zone only only sometimes when we need to externalize bigger project we use people in other time zones so it's not really a big problem for us so that's it thank you any more questions there's a question over there sorry hi it's a question for Kami how far ahead do you plan your kind of own self-directed learning program and how do you prioritize what I say um at the moment I'm trying to learn Gutenberg blocks but so that's the objective and then what I do is just one week ahead so this week I'm going to do this bit because if I try to think of of it as the bigger objective sometimes it feels too big and too difficult so that's why I cut it in in short chunks yeah okay thank you any more questions I actually can't see no I think that's it okay big round of applause for all speakers Kami Mias Francesco Canovi and Steve Holland thank you very much