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One of the terrific resources we have here in Austin is a very active “Meetup” community. Meetup.com provides hosting of accounts featuring time, location, and content info for groups that regularly meet up at various locations in the area. These groups focus on a variety of subjects of interest to those in attendance. Many of these groups focus on technical subjects such as application development or graphic design. It’s a great way to meet and greet folks in your industry, as well as a learning opportunity for much of the continually emerging information so common to the technical community.
I found myself in attendance at one of these meetups on a fortunate evening when the group’s moderator made mention of the fact that he was in need of someone to crank out about a four-minute piece of animated media with a very tight deadline for his company’s upcoming social event. This was on a Thursday night. He mentioned that he needed it in time for the event on the coming Tuesday night. I decided that I didn’t have enough chaos in my life, and more importantly – not enough cash in the bank. So I left him my card and invited him to contact me if he wanted to move forward on the project.
By the next day’s end, I had completed the contract docs, downloaded the script and available assets – and was flash-slinging as hard and fast as I could move. That pace continued over the entire (Super Bowl) weekend – and I had a rough deliverable by Monday morning. I knocked down a few revisions during the rest of the day – and by nightfall had shipped out a final copy for upper management’s approval.
The next night they rolled it out for the vendors and team members in attendance. It made a fair sized splash, and netted quite a few smiling faces, including those of the Franklins – as I dropped them lovingly into the deposit slot.
