Follow up: Will program Ruby for food
A week ago I did a little social experiment here in HN: I asked for food & shelter in exchange of some Ruby programming, see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3007650
Even tough I stated little about me and my skills (it was a very broad and general announce), I quickly got some answers here in the comments, some of them read with real concern, others where helpful, and others were just curious.
But, to tell you the truth, I think the most valuable ones were the ones I got directly in my email. I think it says something about people that actually took their time to visit the profile of an unknown guy and send him an email.
In there I received various offers from various places around the world (even Mexico my own country!): USA, Brazil, Amsterdam and Germany. There were some offers for remote tutoring too (never done that, but I think I'm good at mentoring so, we will see how it goes if it flies).
The decision
After and initial sort out, some early emails & chats, I decided on a german team: Daniel + Nicole (http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dakna). We have been in communication and we all are looking forward to making this experience possible. They told me the arrengements for my stay over there are been taken care of already. What can I say? Never been to Berlin, I'm so excited!
What I noticed is that my plans rang with them, even said they'd love to do the same some day, and I hope they will.
What are you up to, really?
My plans as of now:
1. Travel to some place where I can be of help during 1 to 3 months.
2. Blog about it and maybe make a reputation (or
destroy it in the process, hehe) by letting my
hosts share how the experience was for them.
3. ???
4. Profit & repeat!
As I said in my previous post, I need a place to sleep and food. That's the basic stuff, if something else can be provided I'll be happy to have it. If I can be helped with travel expenses then I can get there faster.
Also, I'd love to make some money after I've proved myself to whoever I'm working with, if that is possible, but it is not necessary. Right now I think it is enough for me to go around the world knowing new places, meeting new people, and appreciating cultural differences.
Maybe, after a while, if everything goes as planned and a network is established, well I'd love to do it with less friction and maybe with a little pay thrown in?
Personally I can say that I want to start this project with my best effort, really make a difference wherever I go, help make your prototype (or app) a reality. If you need tutoring or mentoring I want to make sure you really learn what needs to be learnt. I think I have the skills necessary for this if you really want to do it too.
A little more about me
I'll talk a little bit about my expertise: I consider myself a full stack developer, from backend all the way to frontend. Mix in a little of web design, UI design, UX concerns. Some people would said: Well rounded.
Currently I work with:
Operating system: Ubuntu 11.04
Database: PostgreSQL
Editor: Emacs 24
Code versioning: git
Language: Ruby 1.9
Web framework: Rails 3.1
Browser: Chrome dev channel
Client side stuff: Javascript, backbonejs, underscorejs,
jqueryui and soon I'll add Coffeescript to this list.
I'd like to get into some of these: photography, drawing, paiting, electronic music. Area of expertise exchange anyone?
Well, that's it. Any questions you have, you can reach me in the email provided in my profile, or comment here.
-- Best regards, Víctor
Blog | http://lobotuerto.com/blog