To Consult Or Not To Consult?
February 8, 2008I went to meet with my friend Eric today to learn about his experience with consulting. We used to work together at Cyberlore. When Cyberlore shut down, many of my former coworkers moved away because there were not any other game companies in Western Massachusetts. Eric however, managed to stay behind and set himself up doing consulting work.
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If I learned anything from Eric today, it was that consulting isn’t as glamorous as I had originally suspected or hoped. I think that I will eventually take on a small project from some posting that I find online. It will be something that I can do reasonably well and will take no more than a couple of weeks to finish. This will hopefully give me a good idea of what it is really like to work from home.
I ordered a book yesterday from Amazon about consulting: Getting Started in Consulting by Alan Weiss. I am hoping it will help get me started on exploring this new opportunity.
Eric gave me a couple of ideas for directions I could take as well. He recommended that I look at learning flash or some other web technology since these skills are in high demand and projects that require them are easily broken apart and done as smaller projects. He also suggested I look into putting my blog, or at least part of it, into wiki format.
I had never considered consulting before because of the risk and just the whole open-endedness of it. However, I am in a situation right now that gives me the opportunity to check this out and see what it is like. I am still a little anxious about the whole thing, and part of me thinks that beginning to explore this new direction will give me a good shove back into a relationship with another company. If there was or ever will be a good time for this, it is now, so I may as take advantage of this time and find out.
