[wp-pro] Competition corroding community cohesion and cooperation.

[OTCListings]

I understand your concern, but I believe word of mouth and good work is the 
value. If you are worried about the bidding process, than you are already 
have been out bid.

Sales training for non sales types is a good place to start, as its about 
building your personal value over the quick and dirty jobs. When I look at 
wordpress professionals I look at more than timeframe and cost, I look at 
prior work. This is why I believe there should be a directory of work, 
pluggins, and projects displayed with the developer/design house profile. 
Let work speak for value, some work becomes a commodity and bid down because 
it is exactly that, while others achieve their value because of their 
uniqueness.

If what is being produced is not unique, than you will not get the clients 
who pay more or better. Wordpress is unique in the way that our community 
has advanced the process of letting people who don't know a lot about 
development use almost any application that is built on wordpress. While 
behind the scene, those that know what they are doing are making better and 
better applications. Pay more for something new, modularize the rest. It is 
open source.

If the development of wordpress was subjected to the thought process that we 
have to preserve our pricing for our work... than possibly another platform 
such as Joomla would grow faster if it was cheaper to work with a developer 
on that platform. I think the success of wordpress has been on its 
relatively free, quick and easy approach with no frills or gimmicks 
development.

I like the community how it is, I just wish we saw more work categorized and 
displayed. As far as the group goes, please feel free to send me personally 
a list of all the sites you have built on wordpress, and if you have the 
time, what customizations and pluggins you have running on them. That would 
be far more interesting to me than price or price preservation.

Also I wonder who on this list has built the most number or wordpress 
projects? Not for bragging rights, but please email me how many wordpress 
projects your team has done. Again, send this personally as the WP-Pro list 
is for pro's to discuss wordpress... not be sent umpteen emails about other 
things.

Once I have heard from everyone, I may write a blog on it and post it for 
anyone in the group thats interested.

Thanks.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brylie Oxley" <brylie at gnumedia.org>
To: <wp-pro at lists.automattic.com>
Sent: Monday, January 18, 2010 8:45 AM
Subject: [wp-pro] Competition corroding community cohesion and cooperation.


>
> Just a couple of things that stood out to me:
> 1) Arbitrarily determining a timeframe for a software project will not
> ensure that the project will be completed within the deadline.
> Programmer(s) themselves can more accurately estimate the project based on
> their experience and intuition.
> 2) The lowest bidder mentality, while prevalent, will not ensure either
> quality code or timeliness of deliverables. It is somewhat insulting to
> simply throw a flopping flounder on the ground and expect whichever
> desperate programmer to pounce while jabbing his/her comrade in the ribs 
> as
> a competitive tactic.
>
> The lowest bidder outsourcing mindset is becoming status quo in job
> communities. In the 21st century traditional jobs (and capitalism in
> general) are in their death throes. Most of our subsequent efforts will
> contribute towards temporary tasks and freelance projects. How can we
> reorganize our community to sustain our efforts while ensuring quality
> output and equality of living?
> --Brylie
> "..ideas should freely spread from one [person] to another over the globe,
> for the moral and mutual instruction of man[kind], and improvement of 
> [our]
> condition.."
> --Thomas Jefferson
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