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Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)

railshotline.com

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Re: Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)

#21

Post by bquinn »

swombat wrote: post #5

So, 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.

I know it's a bit OT but if anyone really does want to charge for offering skills in this way, you should check out a startup called www.minutebox.com which offers pay-by-the-minute video calls which are intended to work like this.

Props to these guys for doing it for free! I hope it works out for you.

Re: Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)

#22

Post by JoshTriplett »

jat850 wrote: post #14

This 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…

Integration with some kind of web-based collaborative editor or similar seems like a huge win here.

Re: Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)

#23

Post by michaeldhopkins »

_chap wrote: post #17
michaeldhopkins wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It better be free so long as they're not picking up the damn phone. :)

Sorry man, was helping somebody else. Call me now!

I just finished a pleasant, brief, helpful conversation with _chap. Thanks very much for setting this up for the community.

Re: Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)

#24

Post by _chap »

jat850 wrote: post #14

This 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…

Thanks!

Obviously, some questions you're going to need to work through the code, so we can always move the conversation to text.

So far lots of the calls have been about documentation and best practices which are pretty easy to talk through.

Re: Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)

#25

Post by _chap »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #19
swombat wrote: post #5

So, 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…

We need to make that more clear on the site, we don't entend the volunteers to get paid, but rather rewarded with discounts, early access, and recognition from the communities they help.

Re: Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)

#26

Post by _chap »

michaeldhopkins wrote: post #23
_chap wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry man, was helping somebody else. Call me now!

I just finished a pleasant, brief, helpful conversation with _chap. Thanks very much for setting this up for the community.

Good to talk to you too.

Re: Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)

#27

Post by eof »

GavinB wrote: post #13

It 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.

#RubyOnRails on freenode is basically this.

Re: Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)

#28

Post by JoshTriplett »

_chap wrote: post #25
JoshTriplett wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We need to make that more clear on the site, we don't entend the volunteers to get paid, but rather rewarded with discounts, early access, and recognition from the communities they help.

Ah, I see. The last item on http://www.pockethotline.com/ has a big dollar sign and starts with "The expert earns rewards", so yeah, more clear would help. Re-reading it, now I see that you meant the dollar sign to attach to "and you save money on support", which makes sense.

As an aside, you may also want to make it more clear why your service works better than existing croudsourced support, such as community forums. I think you can tell a pretty compelling story there: less effort to maintain the community resources (since you do the work for them) and phone support rather than forums/lists/etc. The idea of talking to an expert on the phone often seems far more appealing than sending off a mail or a forum post, at least for certain types of questions.

Re: Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)

#29

Post by ZackOfAllTrades »

LuisZaman wrote: post #20
ZackOfAllTrades wrote: post #12

Idea: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.

Just called in and talked to Chap. I wanted to make sure he got to see the idea and know about before it got lost. He immediately made the jump to transcripts and text-based stuff.

Chap: Recording calls with skype forum post: http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=477581

Good luck!

Re: Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)

#30

Post by charliepark »

LuisZaman wrote: post #20
ZackOfAllTrades wrote: post #12

Idea: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.

And as a rate-limiter, there could be a requirement that you transcribe earlier conversations to get "credits" for service. That is, every 100 words buys you X minutes of advice.
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