I've found that I make a lot of good contacts at my local Ruby user group and through just helping people as much as I can via twitter, mailing lists etc. One

I've found that I make a lot of good contacts at my local Ruby user group and through just helping people as much as I can via twitter, mailing lists etc. One problem I have that's similar to what you're talking about is people either have a huge budget and an endless supply of soul-crushing and pointless work for me to do, or they just can't afford me at my rates. More recently I'm finding a sort of sweet spot in bootstrapped companies that have some revenue and can afford to bring me in for one or two weeks per month. Those are my ideal clients, as I'm not very good at dealing with government/BigCo. I love talking about this stuff, so if you want to talk shop more at some point feel free to ping me via email (in profile).