[ubuntu-uk] getting help - UK List

[Nicholas Butler]

Adding my tuppence plus vat to this conversation.

Should there be a list ?

I think a list somewhere on the wiki and related to the already 
established LUG list ( https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/UKLugMembers ) 
which details people who are willing to be contacted to provide help and 
assistance on a financial basis is an accetable and readily implemented 
idea. The marketplace ( http://www.ubuntu.com/support/marketplace ) 
whilst in a similar vein is most likely perused on a Business seeking 
another business requirement ( b2b anybody ? ). However there have been 
much discussion on various topics and I hope you can bear with me whilst 
I throw in my own thoughts and advice on this topic.

Charging
Its not unusual to expect to recompence a person for their contribution 
to your predicament. If you dont currently run and operate a lmited 
company or sole trader company your probably unfamiliar with issues 
relating to income tax and VAT. Keeping this very simple assuming you 
dont go out and form a company to tradethen your can expect any income 
your recieve to be counted towards your own personal taxable income. 
Theres quite a bit of income you can earn before your tax code will be 
changed to a higher bracket and its safe to say that if your earning 25k 
a year then earning a income upto 10k is not going to push you over 
those tax limits. You will however have to pay tax on the income you 
make but its not hard to sort out and many accountants and bookkeepers 
out there charge very little for working this stuff out for you. Dont be 
put off though and dont worry about being paid. Placing a value on the 
work you do ensures that the recipient will recognise the value of the 
work received and will take you more seriously. Now if you start heading 
into payment in kind or bartering you should be aware that this is 
potentially a capital gain and you may be expected to pay the tax 
appropriate to the benefit you received. So if you get a bottle of wine 
once a year its no problem but if you get 12 bottles of wine a week then 
you should declare it.


Expectations
Having begun to provide answers and advice to members of the public or 
private businesses its important to recognise that you are responsible 
for controlling how your clients expect to interact and receive support. 
There are at this point many attitudes that insist the customer will 
always be right and that service is king. If your worried that people 
will expect to be able to get an answer from you at the drop of a hat 
and come running at a phone call then your not managing their 
expectations and you are being lead by demand and not in control of your 
business or your delivery of service. Its more important to be able to 
say No and say no in order to ensure that people understand what you can 
provide and how you deliver it. Its also important to understand that 
you just wont be able to make every customer deleriously  happy. Good 
customers  and good clients are based on good working relationships and 
understanding and if you dont feel this is something you can cultivate 
and you expect to make everyone happy all the time then your going to be 
making a job for yourself and not providing a better service. The 
reasonable answer here is to provide clear communication about what you 
can do, what your willing to do and what you feel needs to be done. If 
you end up with a shouter/screamer or legally sword waving customer then 
you need to realise that this will happen but make sure youve 
communicated as clearly as possible and if you feel threatened or 
harrassed explain that you wont be dealing with that person on that 
basis. You are a human being with rights and privileges of your own.


Liability
Do anything for anyone and even if you dont accept payment for it there 
is a chance you will be liable for something that screws up. This is 
risk and a part of adult life and if you dont feel that this is 
something you are willing to deal with then avoid becoming  invovled. 
Public Liablility insurance is actually very cheap however the instances 
that it can pay out are very limited. The key to avoiding this is to 
ensure that you follow a clear procedure and show due dilligence in the 
work you do. Hardware and software can fail so always being clear as to 
what you expect and what may occur are again pointers to clear 
communication and conflict resolution. Ive broken printers, hardrives 
and monitors in the past, it happens, these things can just fail and die 
when they are in your care. Where I can show that its a failure of the 
part then the client/customer/friend accepts a replacement will have to 
be paid for. Where  ( in the case of a printer assembly ) I have broken 
a part accidentally I have immediately arranged a replacement and a 
repair without quibble. Again its down to good communication and clear 
expectations.


Support
The guys who are already out there supporting windows users are at a 
disadvantage to us Open Source people. They have no access or 
involvement with the core operating system and application community , 
developers or direction ( okay one or two might but as a whole the large 
majority just dont ) . We on the other hand are closer to the source and 
sharing the involvement with that community at a early stage is the key 
to involving new users. If your providing support then give the new user 
some pointers  to the community that surrounds them both physically and 
locally. Further for your own benefit make use of other local business 
networks and clubs such as the Federation of Small Business, Business 
Network International and local chambers of commerce. You dont need to 
be a high flying businessman to be involved just someone who cares about 
providing a service or an idea to those that want and need it. Further 
and this is my personal goal you want to make sure that the other IT 
support companies are aware locally that Linux and Open Source , 
specifically Ubuntu , are being promoted and sought after.


Advertising
If your  going to drop leaflets through the doors of strangers then make 
sure that you do this excercise often and regulalry. Dominos have a very 
succesful marketing strategy which just consists of constantly telling 
you that they are there. You'll not want to stand out too much though 
since you want people looking for IT support to not discount talking to 
you on the basis that you are not windows. Mac people seek out mac 
people and |Windows people seek out windows so if you want to change a 
mind and an operating system you may need to first integrate yourself 
into their trust and understanding and then talk about a change. People 
who are looking for help and support will be reading  local press, local 
trade flyers and occasionally the Business card noteboard in the fish 
and chip shop and they are just looking for support  so list what our 
willing to offer and what sort of support is avialable.


Value
I charge £60.00 plus VAT for the work I do, theres a no fix no fee 
policy and I make all clients pay for hardware and software purchases 
upfront. I generally provide a written sales quotation for any work and 
hardware requested and I invoice the work as I go. I use Turbocash to 
run the books and I have a local accountant and tax adviser to manage 
the business and Ive been selfemployed for near on 8 years.I tend to 
find that if I dont charge for my work the clients take more advantage 
and have less respect for the opionions and the work I do. So bear in 
mind that people expect to pay and in reality people expect to pay good 
value for a good service. However I do offer once a week 1 hour of my 
time for free to anyone whom I have handed a Ubuntu CD to. I use this 
time to make sure they can get online and locate all the relevant 
support infrastructure of the community. Some have commented that I have 
an ulterior motive for doing this and my response is yes I do , I want 
more people using open source because it makes my pitch and my value 
easier to define to the next potential client. There is nothing wrong 
with being motivated to earn a living and gain respect for doing so , 
but thats my motivation.


Recognition
Now heres the hard part. For some in the community my earning a living 
off of open source whilst not coding for doing documentation is wrong. 
For others though theres a little admiration for making changes to small 
and medium sized businesses in the understanding of what open source can 
do for a company. It is hard work and it is a risk and sometimes your 
just going to be shouted at and other times your going to be praised.  I 
do it because I believe that we must have choice and freedom to choose 
how and where our computers work. We as consumers should be able to move 
as easily between computers and platforms as we do from cars, phones, 
houses and banks and its hard to explain to joe user how this is 
important. I was awarded an Ubuntu membership on the basis of long term 
advocacy of open source and im proud to say that, that, was the honest 
and direct reason for my own involvement. I would encourage and support 
anyone else who was trying to do the same thing through whatever vehicle 
they can use to succefully and positively and respectfully endorse and 
promote open source software.


Conclusion

We should have a basic list of who and where can offer support and how 
as part of what we do in the UK and also as a way of helping to define 
generic support from direct application bugfix support. There is a need 
to increase availability of training in open source applications and we 
need to get more information back upstream to the developers about how 
the applications are being utilised and we need to keep getting things 
done long after the talking has subsided.


Thanks for reading


Nik