Not a huge success? Really? Our freelancers meet up on 17th July 2024
Posted by Paul Silver
On the 17th July it was warm enough for us to meet in the beer garden of the Battle of Trafalgar in Brighton. Fifteen of us were there across the night, spread over three of their picnic tables. This is some of what we talked about:
- The protections of having a Limited company
- Chasing money in an awkward situation
- Teaching in Taiwan
- Living in Cairo
- The psychology of not being a huge success
- R&D tax credits
- Making CPUs
- Our first PCs
- BackpackLife is back!
- ClaudeAI code is “exquisite”
- Getting good code out of LLM AIs
- The whole use-LLMs-or-not debate (again)
- Dealing with injuries
- Looking back at the lockdowns
- Running good hosting
- PHP Sussex meet ups
- The British Grand Prix was particularly good this year
- The fun of the lower motor racing formulas
- Karting experiences now it’s gone electric
- Starting to work for yourself when the market is bad
- Forgetting names is normal when networking
It was very nice to meet Nick and Ben for the first time, and Raymond, who’d been along a couple of times recently but I hadn’t had a chance to talk to them.
Not a proper highlight, just a quick note: be careful who you benchmark yourself against. The “not being a huge success” was only a somewhat ironic situation. Someone I’d regard as having a decent level of success was beating himself up as he was comparing himself to people in startups newsletters and podcasts who were claiming a level of success that’s frankly extraordinary. Sometimes you need a bit of perspective about your own success, and getting that over a pleasant drink with friendly people on a summer’s evening is something I’m happy the Farm can provide.