Thank you very much @bxdcomm, @Danifrim and @matthewmottola for a great conversation!
I want to note down a few points here already since the summary post will take a few days:
- The main move now necessary to increase the impact and effectiveness of freelancing and to grow the space in a healthy way would be to focus on enabling teamwork and collaboration between freelancers. Today the big platforms and tools are built for companies, not for networks of freelancers.
- To start ou there are many free tools and learning platforms, but the more you professionalize, the more you will gravitate to whichever tool does it best.
- there are different types of “monopoles”, some are through merit, some through lack of alternative. The former seem acceptable, the later unavoidable for a single freelancer.
- Our thought experiment about what type of tools we would wish to lead us to:
- Something that bundles different communication platforms so that one can have all conversations with collaborators and clients listed together in one place no matter which platforms and tools they are using on their side.
- A tool that also generates a comprehensible story of your previous conversations, issues and solutions with a certain collaborator to keep track of your collaboration history.
- Collaboration over Competition as in point 1, is the future in freelancing to focus on collaboration? leading from this I just was thinking further: How could freelancer organise? Would it make sense to have freelancer unions? Would that be possible? Would that make any sense? In different disciplines or even across?
- Freelancing has been on the rise in the last few years, but Covis has increased this development. This makes solving the challenges faced by freelancers not only more pressing but also more attractive.
If you have any concrete recommendations or comments you would like to add, please do so!
More will follow soon.