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We had a BIG freelance meetup yesterday, in the fantastic Clubco Brno Vlnena coworking space — 120 freelancers, informal networking, tons of insights, friendly conversations, new encounters, and hopefully many new beginnings…
As always in this series of meetups, Robert Vlach held a debate about freelance business (see pic) and invited Brona Sobotka as his special guest. Brona was brilliant, truly one of a kind!
To get notified of our upcoming events, subscribe to the monthly newsletter.
AI is coming for writers, too… or is it the other way around?
Veteran journalist Steven Levy, who has been covering tech for over 40 years, reviewed the latest addition to the plethora of AI tools, NotebookLM, in a Wired article titled Google’s NotebookLM Aims to Be the Ultimate Writing Assistant.
The app, developed at Google in collaboration with the bestselling non-fiction author Steven Johnson, takes in all provided sources and enables a writer to embed their AI-powered analysis neatly into their writing workflow.
Levy expresses some concerns about whether tools like these will relegate human writers to a secondary role in the writing process. Yet he still admits, “In my 40 years of covering tech, this is the most exciting time I can remember.”
If you’re in the U.S., you can try NotebookLM already. If not, you can watch Steven Johnson present it on YouTube:
Wired did a pretty good job in their recent article titled The EU Wants to Fix Gig Work, Uber Has Its Own Ideas. It explains the ongoing battle for the European Union’s Platform Work Directive between various activists and Uber(-like) platforms — without referring to platform workers as freelancers.
Freelancers, who overwhelmingly dislike being labeled as gig workers, work mostly outside the so-called gig economy, with which the freelance economy merely overlaps. Truly independent professionals will hardly be affected by the new directive.
Check out these pictures. This week, we had a fantastic freelance meetup at Networking Premium Gurko Panorama in Sofia, Bulgaria, as a part of our Freelancers On the Road event series.
Around 50 freelancers showed up: we had an easy-going coworking afternoon, guided tour of the venue including two roof-top terraces led by Bozhidar Ivanov, The Freelance Way presented by Locus Publishing’s Kremena Metodieva, and the evening debate about freelance business with Robert Vlach, hosted by Etien Yanev.
All in all, it was an informal, friendly, and exciting meetup that will hopefully lead to some follow-ups organized by the members of the local freelance community.
Many thanks to Networking Premium for having us, to those who provided pictures, and to Stan Slavev for the video reel.
Stay tuned for more meetups in spring, or sign up to our newsletter to get notified in advance.
Elina Jutelyte wrote a great piece titled Unlock Your Earning Potential: A Comprehensive Guide to Freelance Fees Benchmark for their Freelance Business blog. She argues that using surveys as benchmarks is quite useless for freelancers, but notes other smart ways to benchmark prices.
“As with any business endeavor, intelligence gathering is a crucial part of finding the pricing strategy that works best for you.”
Today at 10 AM CET, Robert Vlach will be a guest on a LinkedIn live-stream hosted by Alexander Krastev of BookMark. Their audience is mostly Bulgarian, but the conversation will be in English, mostly about The Freelance Way. Feel free to join!
See you and other freelancers next Monday at our international freelance meetup in Sofia, Bulgaria — sign up for free on Facebook or LinkedIn.
We’re looking forward to seeing you there!
On November 1, we have launched a mini-survey titled Here’s my pricing profile. What’s yours?
Since then, over 100 freelancers worldwide have submitted their self-evaluation on 7 scales that influence freelance pricing.
The results are not statistically representative of all freelancers, but they still offer interesting insights, such as:
You can still participate in the survey or simply read the results.
Winning Solo is a website with a useful blog and newsletter for independent consultants and freelancers, written by Matthew Fenton.
Here’s a sample article: A Freelancer’s Top Five Priorities outlines five areas to focus on — to be more efficient, more effective, more connected, more sought-after, and more expensive.
New, hotly debated article titled Here’s what we know about generative AI’s impact on white-collar work (published behind FT’s paywall), suggests that “generative AI is already taking white-collar jobs and wages in the online freelancing world,” quoting two recent studies. However, both studies are indicative rather than conclusive.
Our take: The assertions and conclusions made in the article seem somewhat premature. The real impact of AI on the entire freelance economy in the USA will be seen later, from surveys and analyses of tax returns that are statistically representative. These will gradually emerge over the coming months. It’s also important to recognize that online freelance platforms (one of the studies primarily drew data from Upwork) are far from being representative of the freelance economy as a whole.