Hi Imran,
It's not a business, but I recently started helping at the Southampton
repair cafe, which runs monthly on the first Saturday of the month.
Among other things, people bring in computers and electronic devices to
be repaired. There's an explicit aim to help people keep using stuff
rather than throwing it away and replacing it, which fits with one of
the reasons people promote desktop Linux. Of course, most of the
computers that come are Windows or Mac systems, though.
The website unfortunately is down at the moment, and apparently the
webmaster is on a long holiday, but here's the latest snapshot from the
wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170611132036/http://transitionsouthampton.org/
If people at the cafe need more than ~30 minutes of help, I imagine you
could offer your services for a later date. But obviously it would be
disrespectful to treat the volunteer-driven event primarily as a chance
to promote one's own services.
Best wishes,
Thomas
On Sun, Sep 10, 2017, at 02:25 PM, Imran Chaudhry via Hampshire wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> A few months ago I helped out a local Linux user with their laptop
> problems. I left them a very happy customer with a much more modern,
> up-to-date laptop running Debian with their (non-trivial!) e-mail
> system up and running.
>
> It took probably 4 visits and 5+ hours to sort everything out. I
> charged and got paid a fair, reasonable hourly rate for it (much less
> than the commercial PC support businesses were charging).
>
> I really enjoyed the experience and the "customer" suggested I should
> explore doing it as a part-time "business" because I displayed a patient,
> service-oriented nature.
>
> Does anyone know in Hampshire LUG know of opportunities in this around
> the Southampton/Eastleigh area? I have put up several flyers around my
> area but so far I have had no response. I mentioned that I'm a "Linux
> specialist" but I expect the majority to be running Windows I guess.
> It may just be that this particular customer is pretty unique because
> they were Linux user since 2000 but someone else did the technical
> set-up who had since got out of touch.
>
> I would only be doing this mainly for fun, experience and to earn a
> bit of "pin-money". If it's too much like a business it takes the fun
> out of it.
>
> Any ideas/thoughts/comments? Anyone tried this already? Thanks.
>
> --
> Please post to: Hampshire@???
> Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire
> LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk
> --------------------------------------------------------------
--
Please post to: Hampshire@???
Web Interface:
https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire
LUG URL:
http://www.hantslug.org.uk
--------------------------------------------------------------
