Fractional work, marketing affected by AI and more, notes from 5th August 2026
Posted by Paul Silver
On the 5th August, fourteen freelancers gathered in the beer garden of the Battle of Trafalgar pub in Brighton to talk all things freelancing, tech, and a bunch of random stuff too. This is some of what we talked about:
- Struggling with motivation
- Becoming a Fractional CTO
- Visitor over from Germany
- Marketing companies affected by AI
- What will happen if OpenAI, Anthropic etc cannot become profitable?
- Altspace is coming back (again)
- Work levels
- Working in the heat
- Pride and its many flags
- Sunburn
- Soaps and long running TV shows (One Piece, Suits, The Walking Dead, Dexter)
- Buying and selling houses
- Working out what to do next
- I have an Opinion corner
- Concerts that were too loud
‘Fractional’ work
If you haven’t come across the term ‘Fractional’ when it comes to work before, it basically means ‘part time.’ So there are ‘Fractional’ Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Chief Finance Officer (CFO) and other high end jobs, where a company needs someone who has the experience and right mindset to give them an overview of where they are, where they need to go, and what the market needs, but don’t need or can’t afford that person to be full time for them. This is often the case for small but growing companies who will benefit from a senior person giving them insight and need it for longer than calling a consultant in for a single project.
If you are at a senior level within your field (e.g. developer or finance person) and have experience in business beyond being a single person on a project, then this may be a route for you to get stability and interesting work in your area.
You might see ‘fractional’ as a bit of an annoying or fad term, but it’s been around for a few years now and its use is growing so it may be best to ignore that it is annoying and use it until something else comes along.