week notes 501 - days, clients and feeling proper

I try to send proposals for a fixed fee, rather than billing by the day. Having spoken to a few friends this was their pretty clear advice, but it leads to complexity in terms of working out which days are 'sold' and which are not. With only a few clients it is pretty easy to block out days for research or writing, but I can imagine it will get more complex in the future. iCal seems to suffice at the minute, combined with FreeAgent time tracking for my own benefit in terms of keeping an eye on how much work is going into some projects.

I had my first client visit out of London last week, a day trip to Talis to see Leigh, Chris and Zach. We spent the day talking over their new data marketplace Kasabi, I'm helping them with the wider social aspects of their product. How to link the data sets and applications to human activity, which will help it feel more like a community and less of a store. I think it will be a great product when it is done, the curatorial and API development features feel like they will make a difference.

The trip to Birmingham, hiring an accountant and a bit more work coming in has made this last week really feel like I'm running a company now, even with half-term last week. It is all quite exciting, I just need my VAT number then I can send off an invoice to my first client, which will then feel very real. A day late on weeknotes this week, but I had a trip to the dentist and an early night instead of posting this.