[LRUG] Suburban widow seeks RoR developer to fill my holes

[Kevin Monk]

Hello LRUGers!

Greetings from the dusty suburbs of Crystal Palace. I run a small web  
development company based out here in the suburbs-ish. I'm feeling a  
little widowed here away from the cosy hub of Clerkenwell and the Big  
City so I wanted to stick out a couple of feelers. We have a few big  
RoR projects running at the moment and we've got a couple of  
maintenance contracts that we want to set up with our clients. The  
issue that I'm having is that I'm the only RoR developer in the  
company and occasionally I need a holiday! Like next year when I'll be  
merrily skipping off on a honeymoon for three weeks. This is great but  
it does leave my maintenance contracts with a wacking great big hole  
in the service provision.

So I've got a couple of questions:

A) Are there any capable freelance RoR developers out there who are  
willing to negotiate a fee for covering those periods when I'm on  
holiday? I've got to stress that the likelihood of you being 'called  
out' is pretty negligible and I think we could probably discuss an  
additional fee for any subsequent work should  a problem arise. The  
two projects that I'm thinking of have been running for about 6 months  
now and neither have 'gone critical', for want of a better term, in  
that period. One of them is actually an intranet application that sits  
on a laptop in an NHS trust so it would involve actually going to the  
trust and fixing on site if needed. The other project that I'm  
thinking of is for a company where they use the application all day  
and every day, and it's quite a core part of their business.

B) Can anyone suggest another way round this? It has occurred to me  
that I could just not worry about it. Give my clients some warning  
that they'll be a gap in my ability to maintain their projects and GO!

and finally,
C) Is there anybody based in South/South East London who's in a  
similar set up to me who might want to meet up and discuss the idea of  
forming some sort of partnership/working relationship? I've got a lot  
of good RoR projects running and to be honest I'm struggling to keep  
up so there could be some good work in it for all.

Regards,

The Suburban Widow or "That bloke who works in that shed up on the hill"
Kevin Monk

We have moved! Please note our new address below.

Mango Swiss Ltd
Westow Hill Studios
45 Westow Hill
Upper Norwood
London SE19 3RW

E: kevin at mangoswiss.com
T: 020 8676 4955
M: 07736 066408

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