What freelancers really need - How can technology help freelancers to thrive and where do we desperately need to improve?

This event is free and has no commercial intentions. It is part of a research project.
This event will be a 1h session on Freelancing + Tech + Resilience which bridges between the coworking event we had in July and the resilience summit but is an independent session that will be part of the Freelancer Week.

The event will take place Thursday the 22nd 17:00 -18:00 CET. It is a 1h online session with an expert panel having a conversation on the topic while the audience can engage via questions in the chat.

As a freelancer, as well as other remote workers, are often relying a lot on a barrage of digital tools and applications to do their work. New technologies can and have changed whole industries and are a huge reason for the rise of the freelancing economy.

In this session, we discuss the positive and negative aspects of technology used and needed by freelancers and remote workers with an expert panel representing technology provider/developer, freelancing organisations and working freelancers. The audience can contribute their own questions via the chat during the session.

Some of our questions:

  • Which tools have made “all the difference” for the work of freelancers?
  • What about the “monopoles” for certain software providers such as Adobe, Google or Microsoft that force freelancers to use and buy those tools to be able to work with their clients.
  • Which common problems, like for example easy workload tracking, still haven’t been properly solved? What improvements would freelancers desperately need?

The conversation panel consists of:

  1. A technology for freelancing provider representative (Matthew Mottola)
  2. A “professional freelancer” representative (Dani Ifrim)
  3. A freelancing organisation representative ( Nicole Gray)

If you are interested and want to join the event or even contribute to it either in form of questions or directly to the panel please comment below.

Looking forward to it!

You can share this event via this link: 1. Edgeryders Forms

To register for this event just comment on this topic.

You will be sent the zoom link to join the session 1 day before the event (another round of links will be sent out 1h before the event for those who register late).

This event is part of the NGI Forward project Generation Internet (NGI) initiative, launched by the European Commission in the autumn of 2016. It received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 825652 from 2019-2021.

You can find a summary of the event here: "Collaboration over Competition" - freelancer technology event follow up article #1


Ngi logo

Eu emblem

The call will be recorded for research purposes. Please read details about that process in this info sheet: Participant Information Sheet for "Freelancing and Technology". By joining the call you are consenting to the recording as described in the information sheet.

2 Likes

Hi Maria, thanks for linking us up to this platform - I would be happy to contribute as your freelancing organisation representative - number 3 on your list. My availability is 22 October from 4:30pm CEST and 23 October from 2pm CEST. Will you be sending some questions through to us just so we know a little more of what to expect?

Hey Everyone, really excited for this event! Also feel free to throw any questions prior to the event my way. Excited to meet and learn from everyone. - Matt

2 Likes

@matthewmottola and @bxdcomm would Thursday the 22nd 17:00 -18:00 CET work for you?

Yes, that’s good for me!

1 Like

@bxdcomm could you send me a picture and a short bio I could post on the platform and link in the speaker list? (as done with Matthew Mottola)

Thank you very much.

Hi Maria, when do you need this? Could I get it to you next week?

sure, no problem :slight_smile:

proto flyer:
freelancer tech event flyer

1 Like

Ping @hires this is the session on freelancer and tech I refered to.

1 Like

Cool, interested to hear more on this; would give hints to us, freelance knowledge workers as well. Just add me to the list of participants. Would be happy to share experience/challenges from my own context. Thanks for organizing:)

2 Likes

@atelli, would you have any concrete questions you would like us to address in this event?

Which are the tools that are most helpful or most annoying for you as a knowledge worker?

Which application did you open most often for your work last week?

1 Like

Helpful tools for teamwork and those tools with data retention problem (i.e the case of zoom or google based gadgets) could be addressed in the talk. My most used tools are whatsapp-telegram-googledocs-dropbox pages-slack-signal-cryptpad-trello in that order. Thanks @MariaEuler

1 Like

@BlackForestBoi, do you define yourself sometimes as a freelancer? Or are you always a founder? Either way, you are working with many freelancers and also from many different places. Do you have comments on the state of and potential needs for technological tools to enable how you or the freelancers you work with work?

And maybe it is interesting to also ask this question in general, who does identify as a freelancer and what does that mean to you?

1 Like

The Adobe Max event will take place in the same week as this discussion. Will be interesting to comment on the sentiments there in this conversation as well.

1 Like

We would also like to shout out to those in the community with experiences in open-source: Which role does or could open source play for freelancers and remote workers? @felix.wolfsteller and @erik_lonroth

1 Like

If you are interested and want to join the event comment here. Share an experience or a question about your relationship with technology tools as a freelancer:
Adobe sign and edit- digital signature apps have made contracts easier and convenient to complete. On the go saving paper and time.

1 Like

If you are interested and want to join the event comment here. Share an experience or a question about your relationship with technology tools as a freelancer:


1 Like

Hi, I’d like to join the event. I’m a fairly recent freelancer and want to learn more about tech tools that assist in freelancing.

2 Likes