Update: This call is closed now. As a result, we’re happy to welcome @anu as a new moderator on this platform. Thank you to everyone who applied or referred to their friends!
Edgeryders LbG, the company operating this community website, is looking to hire somebody from Nepal who can help us manage the content and community on this unwieldy website called edgeryders.eu (And yes, this call for applications is only open to people currently residing in Nepal.)
Your way of working
We hope the following is attractive for you (and please tell us if not, we definitely want to be an attractive employer …):
- This is self-directed remote work: over the Internet / work-from-home / work-from-anywhere, however you call it. We know this is quite unusual (esp. for Nepal), but you’ll like it. Provides lots of freedom, but also needs quite some personal discipline.
- It’s part-time work. The exact amount of work hours will be negotiated with you, depending on how much time you have available. You can even job-share if there’s a need for it.
- Work times are flexible and can be chosen freely. The only requirements are a certain amount of hours per week and month, and sometimes, to get some work done until a certain date.
- Pay is 20,000 NPR per month. That’s not set in stone, but negotiable based on the exact number of work hours and your level of experience.
- Initial duration is one year, but we hope it works out well and we can make this a permanent setup. You can quit any time, but please only apply if you envision yourself doing this part-time job for at least one year.
- You will be paid as a freelance contractor after sending an invoice to our company, Edgeryders LbG. According to our knowledge, this is possible up to 3 lakhs NPR per year without having to register a business of your own in Nepal.
We have been and worked in Nepal before. Back then in 2015,
we had @meenabhatta, @anubhutipoudyal and @dipti_sherchan as local team members on our team. Pretty sure you can ask them how Edgeryders is as an employer. But also, they have set a pretty high standard for quality of work … and you don’t want to destroy our image of what “work made in Nepal” is like
What would be your tasks
We all work remotely in our team, so we have a structured way to send each other tasks using our online platform and tools, and to have group conference calls when we need it. You’d be part of that internal process, and receive tasks like:
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Website content manager on edgeryders.eu. That would be your main task, esp. in the first time. The basic issue to solve is that we have recently switched from the Drupal software to this (much better!) Discourse software to run edgeryders.eu, resulting in (so far) poor content organization on this site. Content re-organization will probably take 150 - 200 hours in total, and include tasks like:
- tagging content with relevant tags
- moving content to better categories, finding better category names and category structure
- finding content related to certain topics and collecting it to a category of a current project
- finding and fixing broken links (and automating that work with web tools and custom Ruby scripts … no need to know Ruby or another programming language though, we’ll teach you if you’re interested in that part)
- fixing issues with formatting, spelling and grammar in the content
- adding proper attribution for Creative Commons licensed images, and finding web tools to automate that job as much as possible
- documenting problems you find with the website software in our Github issue tracker
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Assistant for online community management. The initial time will probably a bit like a helpdesk, for which we will install the Zammad ticket management software for you. Whenever you don’t know what to answer to an e-mail, you’ll refer to one of our core-team people. Later, you can try your hand at actual online community management, writing here on edgeryders.eu to “orchestrate” the community towards great ideas and collaboration.
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Assistant for copywriting, social media publishing, web research and administrative office work. This part will, for a good part, depend on your exact skills and interests. Don’t fear the administrative work though: we hate that too, and will do everything to automate it away
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Web-based outreach and publicity work for PayCoupons, a little startup company that I am involved in and that tries to provide a better alternative to money for small / struggling businesses.
You’ll mostly collaborate with @matthias (me, for the Discourse tech related tasks) and @noemi (for community management tasks, depending on how that works out).
What to bring
- good knowledge of written English (it’s ok to use a spellchecker and other software tools if that helps you to write clear sentences with few mistakes)
- not being afraid of repetitive and / or challenging computer work (… it will definitely be all of that at times, but remember you can always take a break )
- interest and skills to work with complex software and find ways to get it to do what you want
- good habits in documenting your work and knowledge in written form – that’s essential since we’re working as a globally distributed team
- a good Internet connection (you can work from a co-working space like BAC when needed)
- a notebook computer
No need to feel intimidated by this list. Learning quickly is the most important skill, and we’ll be happy to show you everything you need to know for this job.
What you’ll learn
The software you will work with is Discourse, the best free & open source forum software these days, used by some of the largest online forums. So the skills you learn will be useful for similar work-from-anywhere jobs as Discourse moderator / content manager afterwards, and we’ll be happy to teach you as many advanced Discourse admin skills as you want to learn (including some programming on the Ruby console).
How to apply
Simply create an account and introduce yourself in a comment to this post. No need to provide cover letter, resume etc. … we don’t want to waste your time. Simply tell us a bit about you, your relevant experience, link us to content you wrote (blog etc.), or show in creative ways you’re the right person for the job. Again, don’t waste much time. This is just for an initial expression of interest.
We’ll then contact a few of your for an interview (voice or video call), and select one for a first month to try working together. And then proceed to work together, hopefully. (And even if not, the first month is fully paid, of course.)
Who we ware
Edgeryders LbG is a social enterprise founded in 2013 by @alberto, @nadia, @noemi and me (@matthias). We now also have @johncoate and @patrick_andrews on the core team, and whenever we do a client project we hire people from our online community (nominally ~3800 people, but of course less active ones).
One of our unusual properties is that our company is, in principle and in practice, open to new members in the core team: after working with us for a time (say, 1-3 years) and getting to know us well, you may discover that you like this environment, and we may want to talk about you joining us as a core team member. This is not a guaranteed option of course, but it’s possible. Unlike this current job offer, a core team position is not a regular paid position but you create your own job, in the area you like, by getting paid contracts for our company. (With our initial support, of course – you’ll learn from us how to do it.)
We care about the ideas and innovations for better, sustainable living made “at the edge of societies”, and use all kinds of tools and data science to find and connect these ideas. We then use this knowledge to provide paid consultancy services to governments, intergovernmental organizations and NGOs.
Basically, look around on this website what we care about – all the content of all our projects is here, though not always well-sorted or well-presented (which is why we need you …).