Taking back ownership of the word ‘freelancer’

Based on some prompting by Hugh I applied as a speaker at PHPSouthAfrica this year. Apparently they still don’t know how little I actually know as they accepted my talk submission 😉

I’ll be talking just after afternoon tea about a topic that has been on my mind since 2010, that of the common perception of the freelancer, specifically when it comes to developers.

A freelancer or freelance worker is defined as a person who is self-employed and is not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Since becoming a freelance developer in 2010 I’ve discovered that there is a stigma attached to the word. I don’t know if it is developer specific, but every time I meet or take on a new client the fact that I am ‘freelance’ tends to inspire visions of horror, usually of poor deliverables, bad client support and just a general lack of responsibility. In my talk, I would like to unpack this problem and provide some solutions to it.

Here are the slides for this talk.