Want to break into web design "proper"

IMO groups like this go no where fast and is a dead end as for a learning curve.
You say you suck at javascript, so if you found someone who was good at it you would trade, say HTML for javascript. You both may win out for now but down the track you are both no better off than you are now.

The ONLY way to learn is to practice and learn from your mistakes, mistakes mean your learning as you don't often repeat them.
If on the other hand you just want to be a boss and employ people then just hire them and contract the work out, this way you don't need to know anything but how to get the actual work.

The reason forums like this one is here is to help people learn and advance in whatever field/s they want to dabble in. It's all free advice so IMO you should take advantage of it and pick brains, try new things, get your hands dirty, get notepad (or whatever you use) smokin

I think the biggest problem you'd have with this is personality conflicts. If you have a group where everyone is considered equal, you're always going to have individuals who think their position is more important than others. You'll always find this in web design companies - every department thinks that their portion is the most important part of the site (i.e. programmers think the programming is the most important part of the site etc.). You'll need people who, first of all, truly understand the co-operative nature of what you're doing (and aren't just talking the talk). They need to be ready to put their egos aside. Sounds good in theory - would it work in practice?

Remember doing group projects in school? Aren't you grateful that they only lasted a short time? There always seems to be one person who wants to take over, or one person who doesn't pull their weight. In the real world, you need managers to keep things on an even keel.

What might work is an exchange site for freelancers and contractors. There are many, many sites out there for freelance jobs, but I don't know if many of them offer a trade mechanism (maybe they do, I don't know). An opportunity for freelancers to hook up with others who can help them with a project.

Quote: It also got me thinking that noone should really have to go it alone, especially when your starting out.

That's what we're here for. Check out the Market Place to trade services, and of course the other areas for questions and help with any technology.

I think you misunderstood what they're saying, Busy. They don't want to just say "here, you do this", they want to say "ok, you do this and show me what you're doing and why". If the right people get involved for the right reasons, this could be pretty decent. Kind of like those cooking shows where a guest chef comes in and shows the chef how to do something they either don't know or aren't good at.

I think otterbob is the closest to understanding what my idea was. on't get me wrong, I love forums and am active in quite a few asking for and providing support and help. Th eonly problem is that when you are continually asking questions/giving answers you don't really build the sort of relationship with the other poster that would stand you in good stead for anything other than the problem in hand. I'm also not interested in being a 'manager' or hiring out people to carry out work.

Basically I'm just looking for someone like me! I have experience in certain aspects of web design and have made a few sites. I would like to break into making a bit of money from it and getting some real clients. To do this you need a portfolio. I imagine there are others in the same situation as me, they have some talent but are by no means the finished article and are just looking for a bit of a break. I just thought that if there was a small team of varied people at about the same skill level they could all learn from each other wile working on a proect that can go onto their portfolio. To me it seemed like a win-win situation. I'd like the relationships built while working on the project to be taken to a level where we could possibly work together on larger projects and possibly seek out serious clients. Its the fact that we can get a couple of people together and grow as individuals and as a group that I am really after, not to solve any particular design/coding problem.

I could do exactly what busy suggested and just code loads of different websites and get seen but it seems like there are thousands of web designers out there battling for jobs etc and it seems like sometimes that you just get nowhere. I just thought that getting a group of people in a asimilar situation together might give us an edge and add some much needed diversity to the skillset of the 'group'.

I think I was mis-understood slightly but I still take on board the advice. I don't intend to 'trade' skills with anyone but to pool the skills and use them in a mutually beneficial way and build some working and friendly relationships as well.

Thanks for the input so far.

Si.

So basically you're looking for a partnership of more than two people . No reason why not, as long as (in the words of otterbob) "the right people get involved for the right reasons." I can think of a lot of things that might go wrong here. How do you make decisions? What happens when you disagree? What if the work of one member does not meet the quality standards held by other members? What if one member becomes unavailable when it comes time to get the work done? What do you do if someone starts acting like a jerk or treats other team members badly?

This would also be a lot better in real-life as opposed to internet-only. Easier to communicate.

I think you've got it Megan. The only difference being that its a learning partnership. As for all the disagreements I think we'd have to go for the good ol' make sure theres an odd number of people and take a vote solution

I think my next question is where would I find people like me? I think the probem I'm having is that people with just moderate skill levels tend to ask a question on a forum, get an answer and then bugger off. Which I guess is kinda the route of the problem.

Anyone got any ideas? I know not everyone thinks that its a good idea but to be honest I'll never get anywhere by trying to please all the people all of the time and not taking a few risks.

Cheers.
Si.

I think it would be best to hang around at places like this and build relatioinships with people. Once you get to know others you'll be able to find people who you get along with and would like to work with. Make up a site for your group and put it in your signature. Advertise in Market Place once in awhile. Then there's the other usual meethods of promotion (link exchanges, advertising, SEO etc.)

Sorry of I got it wrong.
One thing that worries me about what you say is a group (more than one) work together, share and the end result is something for each persons portfolio.
If I was an employer and I found out a person was in a partnership with others and displaying the results as their own (or even the mention of others involved) it would seriously lessen the inpact of that peice, perhaps to the extent of over looking it completely. It's ok if you want to start a business and your business name is the thing your selling, but just selling yourself, this is not a good idea.

The only way to find someone like you is to clone yourself. Serioulsy, if you are even a semi perfectionist or the other person is, things like messy code, short cuts (short tags etc) can really peeve them off.
I for example have this thing about table layout, to me this
should be on the same line like , same as the end tag. It's no big thing but if I edit someones work I have to spend ages to get the code where as its easy for me to work with.
Try editing an older front page page with notepad, same thing, is very hard to find anything. And I dont even class myself as a semi semi prefectionst, infact am quite lazy .

Whatever you do, do consider ALL the pros and cons, cons will always outway the pros and need to be considered before hand. Also if you are going to get involved in joint ventures I'd get a legal contract drawn up beforehand to protect everyone as law suits can get very messy and expensive.

What if you starting writing up a new Microsoft or something but just couldn't get that last part figured out, Joe bloggs comes along changes a few things and gets it working, then turns around and sells it off as TinyMicro - his own product.

I'm not trying to be negative here, just realistic. These problems do happen everyday on the net and in the real world. Just be careful.

Just to add - there was a site posted for critique a few years ago that was trying to do something like this. It was a group of young people trying to build their portfolios and working as a sort of loosely defined design company. I don't know whatever happened to them though. I sort of remember what the site looked like but I couldn't tell you what it was called.

Thanks for all your input, especially Megan, you really talk alot of sense and the teamwork aspect was somehting I had considered a plus as opposed to a negative. Having said that however I have worked in my fair share of 'bad' teams. I'm sure anyone who's been through college/uni can sympathise with that but I'm actually in a bad work team at the moment, luckily I'm finishing that particular project next week. Oh the joys of being a contractor

One aspect that I am hoping will help the teamwork aspect is the fact that everyone wants to be involved with this project and has enough initiative and enthusiasm to at least contact me. I think there will have to be some form of leadership, purely from a proect management point of view but I'd like it to be an open process, obviously the buck will have to stop somewhere though where there isn't an amicable agreement.

As for Busy's comments I will certainly take them on board and I have thought about them. I think it will be important to put together some sort of "charter" for the project that will be mutually agreed with the members, I think this should cover general aims/goals as well as coding/design practices etc but still include some scope for movement within it but only on agreement of the group. If theres one thing I really want to get out of this is a "one team with one goal" mentality. If this happens with the right people then I think it coul dbe a success.

Obviously I just don't know if it will be a success or not and theres only one way to find out and thats giving it a try. The fact that you've only ever seen on eproject like this before does give me a bit of hope. Anything even slightly unique on the internet these days is a good thing.

Thanks to everyone for their input so far. I'm taking everything on board and its certainly giving me things to address if this ever gets off the ground.
Cheers

Si.

This maybe an idea that has some merit and I think that I would like to be involved, although I don’t know what skills I can bring to the party.
And to follow on some of the negatives that have already been raised what about this, is someone like me any use to the group? I am completely self tort, fairly strong in HTML, CSS and databases, I can pull apart a lot of ASP and JavaScript to make it suit my needs but don’t really know how to program, I know what looks good but am by no means a graphic artist and to make things worse I’m a bit of a perfectionist (the code layout thing really bugs me but I’m even sure I do it right).

Hi there syawilim. You sound very similar to me in that you are self taught and can cover the basics. I'd also certainly not condifer myself a graphic designer, its more something I have to do when creating a site and usually spend ages just getting the simplest logo looking anywhere decent. As for the perfectionost and code structure comment we will have to get together as a group and draw up some sort of charter to 'govern' things like that. There may a bit of a stumbling block with ASP as I was intending to provide hosting and that it doesn't support ASP (although I'll have to double check that), personally I'm more of a PHP guy but thats not really a problem, ust brings a bit of variety which is a good thing.

I'm going to knock up a very quick website with a forum on it later just so people interested have somewhere to go but until then I'm going to PM you now with a few more details. We've actually got a few people interested and I'm in the process of getting ideas from people.

I'd also like to make a quick point. it can be easy to be put off by some of the more negative comments in this thread but please don't be. Its soemthing that I and others are keen to try and if it fails then it fails, noone will loose out. On the other hand we may get some success, and at the very least I'm sure everyone involved will learn something (even if thats how not to do things ). Its also important to get this constructive criticism because it makes us think of things we may not have even considered. That way we're more prepared for circumstances that may arise. I'm very gratefull for all the criticism offered by the board.

Cheers.
Si.