Wow. I saw this and thought, 'genius.' What's it going to cost.. $50/ 20 minutes.. that would be more than fair for an expert.
FREE?????
Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)
11–20 of 66 posts
Re: Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)
#12Idea:Record calls and make them available to others through the website. Less repetition of questions and you will be available to have a much wider outreach.
Re: Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)
#13It does seem like this would be a lot easier if there were also chat (or even if it were chat-only). If you're talking about code, it would be really helpful to be able to paste in snippets or links to resources.
Re: Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)
#14This is a neat idea and I commend you for the effort this has taken and will continue to take. I have some questions for you about how you perceive people using the service:
How do you bridge the code-to-voice gap; that is, someone calling in with a question about coding and you have to describe something that requires a lot of code syntax. Do you pass that off to some sort of e-mail type discussion or screen-sharing process, anything like that?
This seems like it could be a great consulting-style opportunity, but also an awesome way to get new developers over the stumbling blocks they experience commonly when picking up new languages.
edit My curiosity on this stems from past experience, doing phone-based coding or tech support to family or friends - it has always been a major challenge for me to verbally describe some more complex tasks, and 9 times out of 10 I find myself saying, "you know what - I'll just swing by and show you, it'll be a lot easier and faster for the both of us". (I am not a very good auditory learner/processor - I need tactile or visual assistance, and teach others better using the same methods.)
Re: Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)
#15Neat idea. What do you suggest for non-US volunteers (and callers, although I suspect that is harder to solve, at least for free)?
Seems like you have several independent problems there. First, issues of timezone, language, and similar. Second, technical issues of long-distance and connectivity. You can pretty trivially solve the second set of issues with VoIP and other means; however, that doesn't address the non-technical problem. To address that one, you might consider making it easier to connect with people in the same general locale, which would also solve the second problem.
Re: Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)
#16Wow. I saw this and thought, 'genius.' What's it going to cost.. $50/ 20 minutes.. that would be more than fair for an expert. FREE?????
It better be free so long as they're not picking up the damn phone. :)
Re: Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)
#17Re: Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)
#18Wow. I saw this and thought, 'genius.' What's it going to cost.. $50/ 20 minutes.. that would be more than fair for an expert. FREE?????
It better be free so long as they're not picking up the damn phone. :)
I'm assuming they're getting overwhelmed with traffic after being linked here and other high traffic properties. With only two volunteers on staff, there's only so much you can do. I am sure they are rapidly going to look into adding volunteers if the volume stays persistent (and/or hopefully grows even larger).
Re: Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)
#19So, I guess this is like going to Freenode#RubyOnRails, but for people who don't know what IRC is? You should absolutely, totally, utterly figure out a way to charge for this service.
Looks to me like they plan to use this particular hotline as a demo of their service for providing other similar hotlines for businesses. Seems like a great plan.
One thought: you currently suggest that the experts who volunteer get paid for their support. As an alternative model, you might consider providing credits for priority support. In other words: experts answer the easier questions so support staff don't have to, and then those experts get priority access to ask trickier questions and/or bug reports. Developers really want to interact with those experts anyway, without opening themselves up to handholding-level support questions, so everybody wins.
Re: Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)
#20Idea:Record calls and make them available to others through the website. Less repetition of questions and you will be available to have a much wider outreach.
Great idea. With some simple transcripts and text-based search, it could be a great searchable tome of information one day.