I'm sitting on our porch swing on a hot Saturday morning. My kids (2 and 5 years old) just ate their pancakes and are playing in the sprinkler and plastic pool. It's going to be a hot one and I probably need to break down and put the air conditioners in the windows today. For the first weekend in quite some time, I am probably not going to work…on anything…on portfolios, Sakai, coursework, side projects…nothing…I'm going to spend some family time.

Last month I finished my long-in-coming master's degree in Information Management at the iSchool at Syracuse. My eight-year stint at Syracuse University supporting students and faculty is complete. I did all that I could to make my recommendations for next steps and close the projects associated with the grants that funded the Living SchoolBook.

I don't have a "real job" right now, at least not in the sense that I really wanted or planned for. Without getting into the details, I am currently paying the bills working on a couple of Sakai/OSP and Drupal related projects out my home. While I enjoy working with the Sakai and OSP community and software, there are issues with doing this sort of work as an independent consultant.

First of all, a lot of what makes working with an open source project a very rewarding experience is the opportunity to "get in the game" and participate in the "upstream discussion". When employed by SU, I was encouraged (and paid) to participate where I could and to help shape the direction of the software in a manner consistent with our objectives. As an independent consultant, I feel that I still need to participate and not be a "free rider" on the community of professionals that work so hard to make this useful software. However, I recognize that I will rarely be paid to engage in these conversations and I do so at my own short-term loss…one less beach trip for my family in exchange for my personal gratification and credibility in this meritocracy-driven community.

Second, there is all of the "meta-work" associated with managing your own micro-business. Filling your own business pipeline, creating invoices, learning the business tax rules and all of that sort of stuff is more time spent not DOING anything that adds value to any project or my quality of life. I hardly even know what I am talking about here…I am so green…

I am passively pursuing an option for more "stable" employment in the community, but part of me asks (Letterman-style), "Is this anything?" about the whole Sakai/OSP self-employment idea. I wonder what sort of demand there is for someone like me to provide consulting services to schools looking to engage in agile, short-term projects around the OSP tool suite.

It strikes me that with the right people in the room, a small, devoted team could make great strides in an OSP project in just a 1 or 2 week sprint if they had just a little "leg up" and just-in-time "support". I could provide that "leg up" and help a small team to make something useful quickly, document ideas for new enhancements and features…and LEAVE when they want me to. The transaction costs within a small team are much less expensive than between that team and me, so knowing when to leave (and for schools to know when to tell me to leave) is an important decision that an institution would need to make in order to ensure that they were getting the biggest ROI on the project.

I think that these sorts of sessions could spin-off a lot of documented examples and material to contribute to the community library (the OSP community's emerging body of knowledge around deployment strategies and data structures). I could play a role in documenting projects I am involved in and ensuring that they are contributed for others to use.

Keep in mind, this is not necessarily something I believe is sustainable as a business model long-term; however, given my current situation, I would be willing to discuss how this model might work (or not) for individual institutions. This sort of short-term employment would simultaneously add value to the community and (I believe) be a low-cost way to start getting productive with OSP with real, tangible results that we build together. If this is something you think you want to talk about, let me know.