5 ms·

I don't have regular office hours. I start work anywhere from 12-1pm and stop anywhere from midnight-5am. Sometimes I take days off. Sometimes I'm too busy t

I don't have regular office hours. I start work anywhere from 12-1pm and stop anywhere from midnight-5am. Sometimes I take days off. Sometimes I'm too busy to answer the phone. My schedule for something like this is pretty much unpredictable. Proposal: rather than specifying hours, just let me specify here / gone like a regular IM client. If it looks like it's going to be a slow day, I'll turn on the tap, and if things pick up I'll turn it off.

rguzman 16y ago
I like this idea a lot. Maybe we'll have an option to go on the site and just say "mark me as available now". Would that be close enough?
hooande 16y ago
I can understand your situation, but I like their proposed approach (if I understand it correctly). A lot of people like to make appointments in order to be able to plan their time. During YC, you can schedule a 20 minute block of time with PG where he talks to you one on one. A lot of people find it to be useful, and I think it would be great to have something similar for HNers. Some people like to be able to say "I have 20 minutes from 11:00-11:20 scheduled to talk to this person on this date about my project". Personally, I've always felt that scheduled appointments feel more "serious" than IM conversations. If I've made a commitment to talk with you for 20 minutes, you're much more likely to get my undivided attention during that time. Plus I can prepare for our conversation. If I can't make it, I'll just reschedule.
- drewcrawford 16y ago
  Maybe I understood wrong then, and I'm not in the target market for this? I'm not really interested in having "serious" conversations except with people who pay me to solve their problems. I was much more interested in the brainstorming or "fresh pair of eyes" aspect. (My day job is an iOS developer) I'm more than happy to give some advice on somebody's iOS app / idea / Apple / app review / APIs when there's a lull in the day. I do really enjoy helping people out. But the minute I need to start "reserving" time and "scheduling" for this, it starts sounding billable to me. That's the sort of thing I get paid to do. Put another way, think of the analogy to open source. I am more than happy to field a few e-mails a day doing support for my OSS projects. But I'm not going to reserve time in my day for it unless I've got a support contract in place.
  - rguzman 16y ago
    Think of this is as "networking". You have to allocate time beforehand to do that: meetups, coffee, etc. This is no different. The only difference is that instead of expecting to make small-talk the expectation is technical talk. Further, I think it is good to be able to make yourself available quickly on a whim "mark me as available now" like you described. Now, your time may be more valuable than "technical networking" with this crowd. Sure. In that case, you're not in the target demographic, like you concluded.
    - drewcrawford 16y ago
      It's my observation (there are exceptions, but in general) that the awesome people are busy doing awesome things, not idling somewhere. So I would optimize for the busy person, not the person who can set aside 8 regular hours every week. Set a low commitment barrier, and attract great minds. For me personally, there's a list of people 3 feet long on HN that I'd love to pick their brains about something. But I feel like a bother. (In a couple of instances, I've even been told I'm a bother. Sorry guys.) Don't optimize it for me. Optimize it for the people way busier than I am. If pg (or grellas, or patio11, or ...) start using the service, it will both be unimaginably useful and also gain traction.
      - sandipagr 16y ago
        I totally agree that fixed schedule limits the benefits of this activity. As you put it, the barrier should be as low as possible if we want greater participation. Having said that, I am happy that someone is trying to do somehthing good for the HN community. .
      - eru 16y ago
        Sounds like an interesting idea. Perhaps you should even focus explicitly on pleasing, say, patio11 (if he agrees to give you feedback). Stuff that's optimized for on specific person (or a very small group) often also gets better responses from the a much wider audience, then if you went for a `generic' person in the first place. (I can go and find the sources for this.)
ezl 16y ago
noted. so actually i imagined it as being available to people who wanted to do 1-off office hours, "I will be available tomorrow from 5-7 CST." theli0nhearted and i had a short discussion on IRC where I think we've concluded that it makes sense to have a "Currently available/unavailable" flag anyways even for people who do have regular office hours, so I think you'll be pleased with the plan. Basically even if I have office hours, I need to be able to mark that I'm currently occupied with someone, so I'll turn off my "available" indicator. That could work for you as well. Basically you're usually just unavailable. If you feel like talking you can be available.
- drewcrawford 16y ago
  The optimum MVP for me would just be a website that displays a list of HN users who are currently online in Skype along with a link to their HN profile. I don't even have to change any behavior to become "available" or not on your service. Office hours as such are a non-feature for me. I will never set any, and I won't look at anyone's unless I'm actually trying to contact them (in which case I would probably write them an e-mail over trying to schedule an appointment).
  - sandipagr 16y ago
    I think that's an excellent approach. It's simple and functional with no unneeded overhead of planning, timings and what not.
gkelly 16y ago
Is there some way to scrape that IM client status from iChat, skype, gchat, facebook, or whatever else? People could configure that in their contact information/profile. The master switch would be on this site though.
- jiaaro 16y ago
  I'm pretty sure Skype, and gchat both have a public API. Not sure about others

rguzman 16y ago

I like this idea a lot. Maybe we'll have an option to go on the site and just say "mark me as available now". Would that be close enough?

hooande 16y ago

I can understand your situation, but I like their proposed approach (if I understand it correctly). A lot of people like to make appointments in order to be able to plan their time. During YC, you can schedule a 20 minute block of time with PG where he talks to you one on one. A lot of people find it to be useful, and I think it would be great to have something similar for HNers. Some people like to be able to say "I have 20 minutes from 11:00-11:20 scheduled to talk to this person on this date about my project". Personally, I've always felt that scheduled appointments feel more "serious" than IM conversations. If I've made a commitment to talk with you for 20 minutes, you're much more likely to get my undivided attention during that time. Plus I can prepare for our conversation. If I can't make it, I'll just reschedule.

drewcrawford 16y ago
Maybe I understood wrong then, and I'm not in the target market for this? I'm not really interested in having "serious" conversations except with people who pay me to solve their problems. I was much more interested in the brainstorming or "fresh pair of eyes" aspect. (My day job is an iOS developer) I'm more than happy to give some advice on somebody's iOS app / idea / Apple / app review / APIs when there's a lull in the day. I do really enjoy helping people out. But the minute I need to start "reserving" time and "scheduling" for this, it starts sounding billable to me. That's the sort of thing I get paid to do. Put another way, think of the analogy to open source. I am more than happy to field a few e-mails a day doing support for my OSS projects. But I'm not going to reserve time in my day for it unless I've got a support contract in place.
- rguzman 16y ago
  Think of this is as "networking". You have to allocate time beforehand to do that: meetups, coffee, etc. This is no different. The only difference is that instead of expecting to make small-talk the expectation is technical talk. Further, I think it is good to be able to make yourself available quickly on a whim "mark me as available now" like you described. Now, your time may be more valuable than "technical networking" with this crowd. Sure. In that case, you're not in the target demographic, like you concluded.
  - drewcrawford 16y ago
    It's my observation (there are exceptions, but in general) that the awesome people are busy doing awesome things, not idling somewhere. So I would optimize for the busy person, not the person who can set aside 8 regular hours every week. Set a low commitment barrier, and attract great minds. For me personally, there's a list of people 3 feet long on HN that I'd love to pick their brains about something. But I feel like a bother. (In a couple of instances, I've even been told I'm a bother. Sorry guys.) Don't optimize it for me. Optimize it for the people way busier than I am. If pg (or grellas, or patio11, or ...) start using the service, it will both be unimaginably useful and also gain traction.
    - sandipagr 16y ago
      I totally agree that fixed schedule limits the benefits of this activity. As you put it, the barrier should be as low as possible if we want greater participation. Having said that, I am happy that someone is trying to do somehthing good for the HN community. .
    - eru 16y ago
      Sounds like an interesting idea. Perhaps you should even focus explicitly on pleasing, say, patio11 (if he agrees to give you feedback). Stuff that's optimized for on specific person (or a very small group) often also gets better responses from the a much wider audience, then if you went for a `generic' person in the first place. (I can go and find the sources for this.)

ezl 16y ago

noted. so actually i imagined it as being available to people who wanted to do 1-off office hours, "I will be available tomorrow from 5-7 CST." theli0nhearted and i had a short discussion on IRC where I think we've concluded that it makes sense to have a "Currently available/unavailable" flag anyways even for people who do have regular office hours, so I think you'll be pleased with the plan. Basically even if I have office hours, I need to be able to mark that I'm currently occupied with someone, so I'll turn off my "available" indicator. That could work for you as well. Basically you're usually just unavailable. If you feel like talking you can be available.

drewcrawford 16y ago
The optimum MVP for me would just be a website that displays a list of HN users who are currently online in Skype along with a link to their HN profile. I don't even have to change any behavior to become "available" or not on your service. Office hours as such are a non-feature for me. I will never set any, and I won't look at anyone's unless I'm actually trying to contact them (in which case I would probably write them an e-mail over trying to schedule an appointment).
- sandipagr 16y ago
  I think that's an excellent approach. It's simple and functional with no unneeded overhead of planning, timings and what not.

gkelly 16y ago

Is there some way to scrape that IM client status from iChat, skype, gchat, facebook, or whatever else? People could configure that in their contact information/profile. The master switch would be on this site though.

jiaaro 16y ago
I'm pretty sure Skype, and gchat both have a public API. Not sure about others