WeekendHacker

Does anyone else think the way freelance work is allocated is ripe for change?

Seeing the positive response to sites like http://tinyproj.com and http://weekendhacker.net, it seems like highly competent freelancers would benefit from a middle ground between the somewhat impersonal market of eLance/oDesk and the inefficient method of seeking work via personal networks. Something like a "hackers guild" of people who have been vetted for quality work. Projects could be semi-automatically assigned to single or multiple individuals based on the importance of the project as measured by the dollar value attached to it and the skill of the individuals as measured by their historical feedback ratings.

Maybe this is just my naive impression as an undergrad approaching graduation who would prefer freelancing to a 9-5 or even a startup but hasn't come to terms yet with the fact that inefficiency in the matching process and initially low rates are unavoidable. If not and you'd be interested in building or using such a system, I'd like to talk to you. It also relates to emerging things like the "reputation graph" and transitive delegation that can enable these sorts of systems, and are going to be huge (see http://blog.hyperarchy.com, http://liquidfeedback.org, http://rglabsinc.com).

Add the tag yourself! My profile [1] features EMBEDDED C, PCB-DESIGN, and DSP tags. EMBEDDED C existed, I created the other two. EMBEDDED and EMBEDDED SW were also extant when I got here, but there's currently no search feature to see who else uses these tags or what projects used them.

I think HARDWARE is too ambiguous; this could apply to anything from implementing a task on a breadboard to architecting a server rack.

That said, Thomas said that they were working on improved tag features as fas [sic, he's working fast!] as they could. [2].

I've suggested this on the UserVoice tracker [3].

[1]: http://www.weekendhacker.net/hackers/Kevin%20Vermeer

[2]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3238678

[3]: http://weekendhacker.uservoice.com/forums/138659-general/suggestions/2391315-add-features-to-make-tagging-more-useful

I am a first-year CS student looking to build a very small personal project. I could definitely use a mentor, if you are interested. You haven't listed your email but mine is in my profile, feel free to drop me a line.

and if not try http://www.weekendhacker.net/. It launched about a year ago with the same idea and format as Analog. It grew quickly and was fairly successful for a while. It has been quiet lately, the creator mentioned going through some personal stuff, but the most recent mailing was May 4 and it looked great and sounded promising. Good luck finding a project.

Kickstarter HQ: Projects We Love - https://www.kickstarter.com/newsletters/weekly

NASA Earth Observatory - http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/

ESO News (European Southern Observatory) - http://www.eso.org/public/newsletters/esonews/

Designers & Books - http://www.designersandbooks.com

NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology - http://www.nist.gov/

WeekendHacker - http://www.weekendhacker.net/

Maptia - https://maptia.com/ ("discover a world of remarkable stories, told by some of the most inspiring photographers, writers, and adventurers on the planet")

Used to peruse this every now and again, been a few years, https://builditwith.me

A hn user also launched
http://www.weekendhacker.net
which got a bit of traction at the time.

You have also reminded me of the Startup or Shutup thread someone started in 2012.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3394844

Some of the discussion is here...

https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/startup-or-shut-up

I recall the live document linked in the hn thread having activity at the time too but its not working anymore.