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Marc,
I've responded directly to you via e-mail. The beta@brilliantlabs.com address, linked to from the web site, has been converted to a mailing list for current beta testers. I've updated the link to mailto: info@brilliantlabs.com. I've also sent you the download instructions and release notes for the first external test build.
Cheers,
Jim Lamb
Brilliant Labs, Inc.
http://brilliantlabs.com/[^]
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I am posting Roger J's idea here to see how many are interested in this:
The virtual company could consist of single developers and small companies.
the purpose of the 'company' would be to allow developers to take on larger projects that would be to big for a single person/small company to complete.
Members could either share parts of their projects with other members of the group , or , sell the project to others in the group.
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Even if this don't become a reality , it could still be a good way increase your network of people that might be good to know.
jhaga
CodeProject House, Paul Watson wrote:
...and the roar of John Simmons own personal Nascar in the garage. Meg flitting about taking photos.Chris having an heated arguement with Colin Davies and .S.Rod. over egian values. Nish manically typing *censur*. Duncan racing around after his pet *c.* Michael Martin and Bryce loudly yelling *c.* C.G. having a fit as Roger Wright loads up *c.* . Anna waving her *c.* and Deb scoffing chocolates in the corner.
...Good heavens!
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The idea is very good, but it would be really difficult to organize. We would have to set up a set of well defined rules to handle all aspects of our business.
But let's talk about, maybe we succeed ... 
Greetings,
heinz r. vahlbruch
c++ & c# programmer from germany
If IntelliSense doesn't have it, it ain't worth calling - Anonymous
My compiler compiled yours - Seen on a VC++.Net T-Shirt
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One big part of the project would be to learn to know, and trust each other. But that is the same in any company.
jhaga
CodeProject House, Paul Watson wrote:
...and the roar of John Simmons own personal Nascar in the garage. Meg flitting about taking photos.Chris having an heated arguement with Colin Davies and .S.Rod. over egian values. Nish manically typing *censur*. Duncan racing around after his pet *c.* Michael Martin and Bryce loudly yelling *c.* C.G. having a fit as Roger Wright loads up *c.* . Anna waving her *c.* and Deb scoffing chocolates in the corner.
...Good heavens!
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Good idea, but no Implementation.
Step to make own company (on my mind):
- register firm
- solve problem of money payment (open in bank bill or something else...)
- create own site (on site make advertise to your services and products)
- make descision which sector of customer you want to catch...
- make advertise of company site on popular sites/magazines/etc. (according to customers which you want to get)
- get on hand two-three developers which live with you in one town (needed for critical situations, like deadline!)
- and wait...
To make company work you must put into advertise at least near by 5000$(USA)
Good Luck
Alex Kucherenko
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I think it is a great idea and of course I am ready to participate on it.
Actually I was trying to convince my Internet friends from Slovakia to start some kind of virtual company without any success up to now. I even created the web site SlovakFreelancer to get together all people willing to work this way.
If there will be some interest I could translate the site to English language. Sorry guys, now it is only in Slovak language you can have a look at http://slovakfreelancer.wz.cz. What is there:
- Article catalog
- Code article catalog
- Data catalog
- Photo gallery
- Jokes
- Forum
- Poll
- User personal page
- RSS feed back
To check how that publishing system works, you can try on my site http://tvojweb.host.sk too. Some parts of UI are translated to English language.
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c'mon folks , there must be more than us that are interested?
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Remember, America is just waking up. It is only 7:10 in the morning!
jhaga
CodeProject House, Paul Watson wrote:
...and the roar of John Simmons own personal Nascar in the garage. Meg flitting about taking photos.Chris having an heated arguement with Colin Davies and .S.Rod. over egian values. Nish manically typing *censur*. Duncan racing around after his pet *c.* Michael Martin and Bryce loudly yelling *c.* C.G. having a fit as Roger Wright loads up *c.* . Anna waving her *c.* and Deb scoffing chocolates in the corner.
...Good heavens!
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that you'll need more than just developers. 
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we are just discussing it,
many people here have their own consulting firms , and i cant see why it wouldnt be a good idea if some of us outsource/sell parts of projects to other small companies. (?)
//Roger
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Yes, I think it should be something like a joint-venture of interested small companies.
Greetings,
heinz r. vahlbruch
c++ & c# programmer from germany
If IntelliSense doesn't have it, it ain't worth calling - Anonymous
My compiler compiled yours - Seen on a VC++.Net T-Shirt
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And people that don't have their own companies can join in. Payments can always be redirected through some company. That should not be any problem.
With this arrangement we could take on bigger projects.
jhaga
CodeProject House, Paul Watson wrote:
...and the roar of John Simmons own personal Nascar in the garage. Meg flitting about taking photos.Chris having an heated arguement with Colin Davies and .S.Rod. over egian values. Nish manically typing *censur*. Duncan racing around after his pet *c.* Michael Martin and Bryce loudly yelling *c.* C.G. having a fit as Roger Wright loads up *c.* . Anna waving her *c.* and Deb scoffing chocolates in the corner.
...Good heavens!
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I might be interested
- Anders
Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!"
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If any of one's CP Projects (UGLY, SF or DTSC) successful then I would say your virtual company formula works.
So let's root for CP Projects first.
I would love to join, but my hands are full now. Good Luck.
"...if you don't want to hear things that piss you off don't piss off other people. SIMPLE." - Steven Hicks
This signature was created by "Code Project Quoter".
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Virtual company is more about finding work than doing programming. That is the difference and these two concepts should not be mixed.
jhaga
CodeProject House, Paul Watson wrote:
...and the roar of John Simmons own personal Nascar in the garage. Meg flitting about taking photos.Chris having an heated arguement with Colin Davies and .S.Rod. over egian values. Nish manically typing *censur*. Duncan racing around after his pet *c.* Michael Martin and Bryce loudly yelling *c.* C.G. having a fit as Roger Wright loads up *c.* . Anna waving her *c.* and Deb scoffing chocolates in the corner.
...Good heavens!
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However, the aspect of coordination is the same.
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." - Jesus
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi
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jhaga wrote:
finding work than doing programming
If you find the work then who will do the programming?
"...if you don't want to hear things that piss you off don't piss off other people. SIMPLE." - Steven Hicks
This signature was created by "Code Project Quoter".
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Of course we all are programmers but by coordinating and helping each other under a Virtual Company it will be easier give over work to somebody else and get payed for it.
Sometimes people ask me to do big projects but I can't take them, and I don't get them because we are only three people working in my company. Being part of a Virtual Company with 20 programmers with different skills, would give me a possibility to accept projects even in areas were I don't have the needed skill.
Who will do what, how much to pay, etc we will work out once we have enough with interested people.
jhaga
CodeProject House, Paul Watson wrote:
...and the roar of John Simmons own personal Nascar in the garage. Meg flitting about taking photos.Chris having an heated arguement with Colin Davies and .S.Rod. over egian values. Nish manically typing *censur*. Duncan racing around after his pet *c.* Michael Martin and Bryce loudly yelling *c.* C.G. having a fit as Roger Wright loads up *c.* . Anna waving her *c.* and Deb scoffing chocolates in the corner.
...Good heavens!
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Hey, I'm in! 
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." - Jesus
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi
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I finally wandered over to this forum and noticed your post. I think it's a great idea, but if you can't get people to work well together within one company and physically next to each other, how in the world are you going to succeed in a virtual environment?
I'm not trying to throw a wet blanket on your idea, it's just that I've been wondering about this problem for 20 years now. I've had varied success with working long distance with my clients (more success than failure), but I've found it much more difficult to work remotely with other programmers.
Maybe money is a motivator to get people to work, but I typically find that quality is nearly impossible to maintain in long distance programmer to programmer relationships. This is primarily due to a much narrower communication bitrate and reduced bandwidth. It's easy for me to walk over to the next guy and ask "how's it going?", and check out his/her code remotely as it's being developed. It's a lot harder to do that in a virtual company. That, coupled with the lack of perceived project leadership (which is addressed primarily by the physical proximity effect, ie, the big stick), makes for some difficult times.
However, if there were some technical solutions available, such as www.gotomypc.com and the like, to facilitate monitoring, communication, and decision making, then I think a virtual company would have a better chance of success. Identifying what tools exist, how to use them, and what tools are needed might be the first step.
I also think that people need to "buy in" to the company, (yes, with $$$), sort of like a co-op. Initial membership fees, different levels of membership coupled to different voting rights on company direction, "stock options", etc.
Marc
Every line of code is a liability - Taka Muraoka
A doable project is one that is small enough to be done quickly and big enough to be interesting - Ken Orr
CPP Script Framework Design Page
Latest AAL Article
AAL blog
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This idea presents a very interesting problem. I think that integrity is one, motivation is another not forgetting unity of course. Some basic goals go like this. Talk is cheap.
1. Biggest problem is Capital. First project comes in. It's a client wanting a database application running on SQL Server 6.0 using Microsoft Transaction server 1.0. The client wants to use this application world-wide and it needs to interface with SAP R/3 release 4.6D. Oh yes, all this has to run on Windows NT 4.0 Server.
- I can provide a machine and I can provide a 640 KBPS connection to the server. I can provide all the software except SAP. If we have 10 developers who can work on this project we need to purchase a 10 user VPN license for my firewall at $175. We all need copies of Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise Edition (It's a VB project but you need Studio to compile some of the ATL libraries that come with SAP.) Only 4 of us currently have it so we need 6 copies. There will be other costs involved and these will have to be offset somewhere.
- Do you expect the client to pay a retainer so that we can buy the tools? How do you handle this?
- Who works on getting us more work while the rest of us code on this?
- How do we pay for advertising?
* For something like this to be succesful either people pay in at least $1000 to get going.
2. Who is going to manage the books? Where will the company be located for taxable and import purposes?
3. How do we determine who gets paid what? Is it an even split down the middle? What if one person does more work and if they do, how do they prove it?
4. The customer is unhappy, they live in the United States and they decide to sue to get their money back. What then?
5. A deadline is approaching. It's two days away we all have 48 hours to get the project done and there are at least 160 code hours left. How can you guarantee that enough people won't have other things going on? Do you contract the remaining work out to developers for hire?
6. Is there a limit to how many people can participate. What if 100 pay a $1000 bucks to join but there is not enough work to bring them into the project?
7. This is similar to 6. But what if you have enough work for 6 developers and 20 are interested and ready to go. Who will the first 6 be and how will you decide that?
____________________________________________________________________________________
I could go on and on.
First step then is for someone to develop a business plan. Put the ideas down on paper map them out. Maybe two people do it together. You will need to consult an attorney and other agencies to understand the international aspects of doing business. Perhaps the people that do the business plan can waive the $1000 or whatever fee...
Someone post a business plan first, perhaps as a CP article then others help to revise it and focus it. Once a solid business plan is in place and all the "gotchas" that are predictable have been adressed, then you start looking for real work.
Just my thoughts, feel free to disagree...
"Back to school, back to school; to prove to dad I'm not a fool." - Billy Madison (Adam Sandler)
Rex Winn
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Sounds like you have a group of core coders...you guys interested in someone for documentation??
I'm new to the boards here and am a student coder. But I write tech docs and am working on a major help file revamp for my employer. I am also trained in PR.
Regards,
The Boolean Operator aka Boo
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The start has been a little slow. Someone trained in PR is just what we need. I think we need to start a new thread with some fresh ideas.
jhaga
---------------------------------
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Conclusion, 1854
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Agreed. 
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." - Jesus
"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi
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I agree too...I have to catch up on all the existing threads though.
It also sounds like there should be some form of a live chat or place to hash out ideas publically..would CP mind us using the message boards to do this?
Regards,
The Boolean Operator aka Boo
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