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i think, this is the wrong forum!
Don't try it, just do it! 
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I'm just tossing a thought out here...but it sounds like the legal and logistical issues of forming a virtual company would be a nightmare. So, why not form a co-op. Build a centralized branding and location for customers to find one of the co-ops fine contractors.
Each contractor subscribes to a certain set of business rules set forth by the co-op and a such is autorized to do business under the group's branding. Behind the scenes, the co-op members, contractors, however you want to put it can "hire" each other at a set rate agreed to by the group.
This will give you the power of many under a single umbrella, plus you can share your work load with others. It will also allow folks to take on larger projects than usual. It will let the individual contractors keep there own business separate from the larger entity for legal or whatever other reasons too.
I have a larger vision in my head, but have to actually organize it a little better if people are interested in listening.
I'll add some more to this post in a little bit. I need to run and take care of something urgent at the moment.
Regards,
The Boolean Operator aka Boo
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Sounds ok to me. One practical issue, that I would like to be addressed, is a possibility for members to make investment in the Virtual Company in the form of time and hours, instead of in money.
More ideas:
- a way to control that all work that is done, has some minimum standard.
- use of only one programming language (c# ?) as a way of simplifying communication and administration.
** will add more later** 
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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I agree with the part about allowing members to make a non-cash contribution. But, putting down cash forces a commitment. Frankly, right now time is about all I would have to offer though.
And there would have to be standards. Standards on conduct, business practices etc.
I don't think you could confine it to a particular language. You could probably confine a particular project to a language. But, I'm new to the development community so I would not be a subject matter expert.
I also think it would take out some of the appeal. If you have a diverse group of experienced developers. The whole team is more appealing. You could feature a strength like .NET development. etc. But still offer other services.
One of the challenges would be how to handle customers. A potential customer in Germany for example should be hooked up with a German developer. That person could act like a general contractor for a construciton project. The only issue would be how would you compensate the general contractor if he/she was acting as a proxy for say a developer in the US.
write more later...
Regards,
The Boolean Operator aka Boo
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BooleanOperator wrote:
how would you compensate the general contractor
The general contractor would get paid directly by the customer, but how does he compensate the other members that has contibuted to the project? My idea is that he would pay by helping the others when they need help in some project. At some point we would need to start doing real money transactions but in the beginning we could do like this, or what do you think?
jhaga
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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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jhaga wrote:
My idea is that he would pay by helping the others when they need help in some project.
Well to be honest, I think that would be a starting point, in terms of helping others. Digging around, I think some groups similar to what we are talking about exist -- rent-a-coder type groups. Not sure if any exist yet where you barter time.
Let me state first, I'm not meaning to be negative. I’m just looking at things from a pessimistic, yet realistic, angle.
There are problems with bartering for services. Unlike bartering for goods, there is no tangible exchange. In other words, you are not trading apples for clams. So people tend to evaluate how they fulfill that barter agreement based what their needs are. Not the spirit of the agreement. This is not always the case, but I will provide a case in point below.
Lots of things are done on barter agreements in the radio broadcast industry. Thus the phrase radio stations are often, “Trade rich and cash flow poor.” Normally these agreements work out because the stations trade air-time – a non-tangible product – for goods and services by advertisers – often start-ups – without much capital that couldn’t afford to advertise otherwise. When trading for goods, this usually works out for everybody. However, the times when radio stations usually get burned are when trading for services.
For example, WXYZ is approached by start up ISP and web publisher X. They strike an agreement that WXYX will run 100 ads a month for X. In exchange, X will design and manage the station’s website. Since WXYZ’s traffic and billing process is mostly automated X’s ads run almost unnoticed -- faithfully. X keeps up its part of the agreement until X starts to get busy with paying customers. These paying customers start to take control of X’s attention and the level of service provided to WXYZ drops and drops until the station’s needs start being ignored. Of course the story ends differently in each case, but it almost always ends the relationship badly.
This scenario has been repeated dozens, if not hundreds, of times at radio stations here in the US alone. I can see this pattern playing out in the proposed co-op as well. Perhaps not with the frequency that I described in the radio business, but it will happen if no tangible product or financial exchange occurs.
Regards,
The Boolean Operator aka Boo
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That Co-op idea sounds pretty good. It will be a lot of work but I think we could manage it.
BooleanOperator wrote:
A potential customer in Germany for example should be hooked up with a German developer
I'd like to be one of your German developers ... 
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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jhaga wrote:
- use of only one programming language (c# ?) as a way of simplifying communication and administration.
Bad idea, why limit what jobs can be done. Do you really mean that under this "umbrella" only projects using a single language is accepted.
Then it's going to die soon.
- Anders
Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!"
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Do you want to invest cash into the company or just your time?
jhaga
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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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jhaga wrote:
Do you want to invest cash into the company or just your time?
Funny reply to what I wrote 
Right now I dont know if I will invest anything or even be a part of it. I'm interested, nothing more, I dont know enough to tell if I wanna invest anything more that writing this...
- Anders
Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!"
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It was not a reply. All this process would just be much easier if people would say what they like, instead of what they don't like.
jhaga
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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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Well, if you dont want anyone to critisize your ideas, then I'll just shut up and leave the discussion!
- Anders
Money talks, but all mine ever says is "Goodbye!"
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Of course you can critisize as much as you want, that's the idea with this. And I will put forward new arguments for my ideas if I have any. I am only for C# if everybody else is, so I will forget about that.
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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Anders Molin wrote:
Do you really mean that under this "umbrella" only projects using a single language is accepted.
What I was getting at was the umbrella of the group's talents. You are right! Limiting to a single language would be a bad idea. No one language solves every problem. Well at least in my limited experience. And, being "one-trick" ponies won't get the group very far.
Regards,
The Boolean Operator aka Boo
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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
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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As you have stated, collaboration, quality control and numerous other points are key to success. I was trying to get a macro vision in place before trying to break it apart into smaller and more critcal pieces.
I'm grateful you reposted this so others who didn't see it in the previous topic have a chance to read it.
Regards,
The Boolean Operator aka Boo
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BooleanOperator wrote:
I was trying to get a macro vision in place
I think that really needs to come from the people who originate the idea. Getting other people's vision sounds great but what works better in my experience is giving people a vision that they can buy into. Otherwise people get the wrong expectations, squabble about pointless things, etc. There's enough people in the world and on CP that YOUR vision can be sustained by people interested in it. As I posted to jhaga also:
I tend to think that it is more effective to put some work into a plan (for example, a drawing of how the business works is an excellent start) and high level ideas. This gives people something to chew on rather than an abstract idea. Even if you end up throwing out the original plan because people have made better or different suggestions, it provides some much needed focus.
For example, I wouldn't go about presenting a virtual company idea this way. I'd put together a couple web pages on the Internet, do some research first, show people that it's possible, think of some of the problems and propose some solutions. The "vote on this idea" concept seems quite popular.
Once you have clearly stated YOUR vision, then yes, by all means, this is a springboard for input from other people. Just my 2c though.
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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I agree with you, but we have to focus on people that are interested in building up the organization first. Once we have 4-5 dedicated people, then we can start doing the things you suggest.
I am prepared to spend some time on (boring?)organizational issues and so is BooleanOperator but we still need some more people.
jhaga
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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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jhaga wrote:
but we have to focus on people that are interested in building up the organization first.
I tend to think that it is more effective to put some work into a plan (for example, a drawing of how the business works is an excellent start) and high level ideas. This gives people something to chew on rather than an abstract idea. Even if you end up throwing out the original plan because people have made better or different suggestions, it provides some much needed focus.
For example, I wouldn't go about presenting a virtual company idea this way. I'd put together a couple web pages on the Internet, do some research first, show people that it's possible, think of some of the problems and propose some solutions. The "vote on this idea" concept seems quite popular.
Just my 2c though.
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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You are absolutely right, Marc. Why don't you join me and BooleanOperator and we draw up a business plan together?
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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jhaga wrote:
Why don't you join me and BooleanOperator and we draw up a business plan together?
Sadly, I have WAY too much on my plate right now to be able to invest the time to work on this cool idea.
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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And I have WAY WAY too much on my plate, and will pursue this project only if there is enough interest in it.
Anyhow thanks for your ideas.
jhaga
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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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jhaga wrote:
And I have WAY WAY too much on my plate, and will pursue this project only if there is enough interest in it.
Touche.  I guess it's sort of a catch-22 eh? Well, that leaves BooleanOperator.
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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Marc Clifton wrote:
that leaves BooleanOperator
Yes, true or false
jhaga
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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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jhaga wrote:
Yes, true or false
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