CS.com job creation scheme

[Rapscallion]

This thread is a result of Pedersen's thoughts in chat the other day.

Could CS.com form its own business for the benefit of the participating members? What sort of business?

We've got some technical people, some artistic people, and we've got plenty of people in customer facing roles.

What could we as a group form as a company, hypothetically speaking?

Should be interesting to see the thoughts.

Rapscallion

[csquared]

An IT outsourcing/hosting service.

[PepperElf]

i guess the main thing is to figure out what service you want to provide
and if you really want to deal with the customers.

cos that could end up being an interesting irony... having SCs for CS.com

[Dilorenzo]

With artistic people, technical people and people to deal with customers? Mixing all that together in one nice big bag?

Advertising. Online advertising specifically, or website creation, that sort of thing, but mostly for corporate entities. Writing proof, creating the designs, implementing those designs, ensuring the customer is... the customer.

It's the only thing I can think of that would use all three of those groups. Publication is another option, but that's a lot harder to get into, even the online version.

[Mytical]

With artistic people, technical people and people to deal with customers? Mixing all that together in one nice big bag?

Advertising. Online advertising specifically, or website creation, that sort of thing, but mostly for corporate entities. Writing proof, creating the designs, implementing those designs, ensuring the customer is... the customer.

It's the only thing I can think of that would use all three of those groups. Publication is another option, but that's a lot harder to get into, even the online version.

This is the first thing I thought of. I would love to get into Advertising especially the creative side of it. I know I can create better ads then the insanity that is on TV.

[Eireann]

What a FABULOUS idea!

Just off the top of my head:

Advice on a number of topics (we already have IT people giving advice to members).

Artistic work, as mentioned above.

Tourism! We're a site with members worldwide. Some members (including me) might be open to showing visitors around their area.

[Dasota]

Tourism! We're a site with members worldwide. Some members (including me) might be open to showing visitors around their area.

In this vein, I would open up my house ala the site www.couchsurfing.org for other members in CS.

[Pixilated]

*snip*

We've got some technical people, some artistic people, and we've got plenty of people in customer facing roles.

*snip*
Rapscallion

Also people with writing and editing skills.

If publication is too difficult to get into, I like the idea of advertising.

The tourism idea is a good one too!

[Dilorenzo]

If publication is too difficult to get into

To clarify why I said that:

Print Media is pretty much dead. The only time I see a paper is when these kids throw the free local ones on my lawn. I really have to call them to tell them to quit that.

Online publication, as in specialty news sources (gaming, food, what have you), is just over saturated right now. You can go to a site for pretty much every specific thing these days.

[csquared]

Expanding on IT outsourcing... A temp agency. Gather up the resumes of the people who want to be involved. If you hear of something, pass it along to the qualified people.

[AccountingDrone]

I would be open to anything I could do at home on a computer - I already do Amazon's Mechanical Turk to feed my book addiction. I am perfectly happy to do boring data entry by the hour.

I could do menu planning by the week for people, I already do it for myself and I understand special needs menu planning.

I have given serious consideration to going back to school for architecture and setting up as a handicap access consultant [especially after this past round the country road trip. The issues with the rooms boggle the mind]

[Pixilated]

To clarify why I said that:

Print Media is pretty much dead. The only time I see a paper is when these kids throw the free local ones on my lawn. I really have to call them to tell them to quit that.

Online publication, as in specialty news sources (gaming, food, what have you), is just over saturated right now. You can go to a site for pretty much every specific thing these days.

You're very right about print media being dead. People in the newspaper business keep trying to put a brave face on it, but why would I buy a newspaper (my last one was often characterized as giving readers yesterday's news tomorrow) when I can go online? And I'm old enough to be PC -- pre-computers. If people my age prefer going to cyberspace for their news, people younger than us, who've been raised with computers, are far less likely to go anywhere else.

Maybe we could start an online publication for dealing with SCs ... ? An advice column, perhaps?

Good luck in getting the freebies stopped. My previous employer used to have "Free Friday" papers; we got endless angry calls from people who didn't want them. But the advertisers were promised that EVERY HOME would get one, so ...

Expanding on IT outsourcing... A temp agency. Gather up the resumes of the people who want to be involved. If you hear of something, pass it along to the qualified people.

That would be a great idea. We had a program here called the Job Finders Club; it involved about a dozen people at a time, and as you were hunting for your job, if you heard of a job that somebody else might be interested in, you would report it at the next day's meeting. It was really successful before the last major economic slump, but even after that, it still fairly helpful. So, of course, the government, in its infinite wisdom, stopped funding the program.

[artcurmudgeon]

ideas off the top of my head...

1)design/hosting company-a vps is cheap just need the right motivated people to run it as it would only be as good as the driving force behind it.
2)IT oursourcing business - think onforce.com
3)Customer phone service, easy enough with voip technology

[Salted Grump]

Customer Service Troubleshooting and retraining; we go around and retrain management to be good management instead of spineless jellyfish.

[Mytical]

Customer Service Troubleshooting and retraining; we go around and retrain management to be good management instead of spineless jellyfish.

Ok, this may be my favorite right here. We do have some awesome managers on the site who could provide the necessary experience for this. Those of us who do not have the experience could be the support staff. Things like setting up appointments, advertising, hosting (when the ones with the experience travel to help keep down costs)..etc.

We could also (if I remember right) do security (dang it what is the word I am looking for..where you pinpoint where breaches in security might be, and retrain/help current security deal with it?) I believe we have some with a lot of security experience here.

THAT might be our selling point in fact. Temp agency (we could fill just about any role for a business), retraining/training office, and vacation hosting all rolled into one