Camels - CC / Flickr

It’s one of the problems I have as a freelancer, and I’m not alone in this – how much am I supposed to charge for the web design services I provide? An invoice running to hundreds or even thousands of pounds or Euros sounds scary for most of the people I work with.

Most of my clients are politicians – many MPs in Westminster – and they each, personally, get a salary of about £64000. Yet the only people they are used to paying are researchers and interns on a month by month basis and there’s no understanding of how a freelancer’s work is organised. One Brussels politician once told me €700 was the upper limit for payment for her complicated site, oblivious to the fact that she was spending €16000 / month on staffing expenses. OK, not the same budget lines, but go figure it out. Needless to say these politicians’ own salaries are at least twice my own.

Let’s look at this the other way – from the point of view of my expenses.

I’m moving to London in September as most of my clients are there. I’ll be working from home most of the time, I’m in my early 30s, and I need space to work. So no flat-sharing (I need a place to myself) so my rent is going to be £850 / month. Add telephone, internet, utilities, council tax and the total is about £1000. Add onto that HMRC self assessment payments on account of £415 / month and that’s more than £1400 before I have even bought some food at the supermarket… Then comes travel to meet clients, overheads for web hosting, costs for accountants.

Then take a working month. Theoretically (ha!) out of 30 days I am supposed to take weekends off, so 22 days total. At least one day a week I need to organise my finances, chase up clients that have not paid. So that’s 18 days.

I need to be invoicing at least £500 / week just to keep things turning, and ideally something close to £800. That means I need to launch 3 simple-ish WordPress websites each and every month. 36 new sites a year! There are already close to 100 sites still running that I’ve designed or developed in the past, each with their unique legacy, and that legacy never reduces in size. Alternatively I could take on larger projects that operate on the basis of some form of retainer.

So that’s the reason for the camels pictured here. I’m lumping a heavier and heavier weight onto my back. I have major responsibility for a huge number of sites and I have considerable personal financial responsibilities. And the gap between these things is rather narrow just at the moment.

Bow Road Underground Station Sign - CC / Flickr

I loose track who I’ve told and who has just heard earlier stages of the plan… so here’s an explanation about my imminent move to London.

Essentially for the last 6 months I have been wondering whether to move. After 3 years based predominantly in Brussels I felt it was time for something new, or at least a different challenge. Despite the appeal of Berlin I’ve opted to move back to London. The reasons for this are essentially professional – the scale of the web projects I am managing for clients in London gets larger and larger, and the clients more and more high profile – Diane Abbott and Ken Livingstone for example. I’m doing all of that while not being in London more than a couple of days a month… so what can I do if I’m there all the time? Plus the cost of regular Eurostar trips is mounting.

I’ve now found a flat for my move to London – in Bow in East London, between Victoria Park and Bow Road tube station. For the political nerds that’s Bethnal Green & Bow constituency, represented by Rushanara Ali MP (who happens to be one of my web clients). I get the keys to the place on 20th August and will shift my stuff to London on 12th September. Between now and then I’ll mostly be in Brussels, with a couple of short trips to visit friends in Stockholm and family in France.

So that’s the plan. Where’s the next interesting web campaign?

London - CC / Flickr

I’ve known for a while that I needed to move away from Brussels. I even tried to crowdsource some answers about where to move. But now my mind is made up – London it will be, from sometime later this year. I don’t know quite when yet, and I equally don’t know where I’m going to be living there, but the decision is taken.

Why?

It’s all to do with work. Were it about Parc Duden, St Gilles and Tripel Kameliet I would stick with Brussels. But the problem is that I have basically no work in Belgium, and hence spend very, very little time there. Eurostar commuting and living out of a suitcase are only things a person can do for so long…

I see little prospect of the work situation improving in Brussels – the communications environment is inherently inward looking, and the client base for small, edgy web campaigns is minimal. The number of MEPs wanting to make interesting use of the net is equally limited.

London by contrast offers a wealth of opportunities. I’ve just launched a new website for Ken Livingstone who hopes to be Labour’s candidate for Mayor of London in 2012. That builds on the 12 websites I designed for candidates in the UK election. And I’ve managed all of that while not actually being there much! What can I do when I have the opportunity to meet people, build networks, and attend all the interesting events about internet politics that take place in London?

So the planning for London has already started and it will stretch through the summer, culminating with a van full of my stuff on a ferry from Ostend. As an EU nerd there will always be a pull towards Brussels – this is already my second stint – but it’s time for a change.

Reading the book now has helped me try to structure my own thoughts about these matters. For the last two and a half years I’ve lived mostly in Brussels with plenty of time also spent in London for work. Now it’s high time that something changes. That might not necessarily mean a change of home city, but freelance web design and EU politics training based in Brussels is not working. I’ve not found the creative kick I need in the political web design arena here and the practical EU training is not as challenging or fun as it once was. I first blogged about these dilemmas in January – this post is a more detailed follow up. If I am to move it would be from sometime this coming summer.

There’s also a common misconception among friends about my work – because I do web strategy and web design plenty of people assume I can do the work from anywhere. Yes, that’s true, I can work from anywhere, but I cannot get work anywhere. Because the work I get is all thanks to word of mouth, via people I meet at events, colleagues of colleagues etc. I need to be based in a place where the market for political websites is strong and vibrant.

First of all, what are the options?

Brussels, London and Berlin are the obvious possibilities. I always enjoy time I spend in Germany, but is there any city other than Berlin worth living in? Nordic cities (Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm) are organised and creative, but also rather closed and I don’t speak the languages. Same applies to Netherlands. USA and Canada are, for now, simply too unfathomable, and I crave order and Ordnung too much to contemplate France, Spain or Italy.

Running these cities through Florida’s Place Finder comes up with the following scores: London – 70, Berlin – 67, other Nordic or German city – between 55 and 62, and Brussels – 47.

London wins hands down in terms of quality of the job market. The market for political web design and strategy is vast, and I am already well connected in the relevant sector. Being based there also keeps the door to future party political engagement open. There is also the possible side line of EU training there. English is my mother tongue, and I have a decent number of good friends there. Conversely, finding a decent place to live in London is hellish, and escape from the pressure of the city is not easy, and I would be more dependent on planes if and when I need to really escape the city.

Berlin wins enormously when it comes to quality of life. Ever since I lived there for a short while in 2001/2 I’ve longed to return. It’s historic and modern, brilliant flats to live in don’t cost the earth, there’s abundant green space, and I have almost as many friends there as I do in London. But what would I do there? The city has a sky-high unemployment rate, and there seem to be more web agencies than there is work for them to all do. I speak German, but I don’t write it flawlessly. Any prospect of party political engagement is more complex than London, but not out of the question. But might I end up there and have no cash and insufficient work to do?

Other Nordic, German or Dutch cities are some sort of balance between the pros and cons of London and Berlin, and perhaps present more tricky challenges than either. The nature around Oslo or Stockholm might be stunning, but could I see myself living in cities that geographically far from the European mainstream? Conversely there remains the prospect that an interesting project or job might attract me to one of those cities, but that’s a rather distant prospect.

And then there’s Brussels. As an EU and computer nerd it should surely be the perfect place? Work prospects are better than Berlin, but in large part because it takes than less than 2 hours to get to London. Quality of life is better than London, especially when it comes to housing. But the stodgy, unresponsive political environment gives no prospect whatsoever of local political engagement – I’m very much an expat in Brussels. Basic stuff not working, and risking my life every time I cycle are getting me down. Conversely I have more good friends here than I do anywhere else.

And so to the Wikinomics bit… I genuinely don’t know the answer as to what to do, so I’m going to use the wisdom of the crowd people that visit my blog to try to help me answer. Please take a second to vote in the poll below and, if you have brilliant additional suggestions, please comment below!

I like new years. It’s a time to look forward. The days even start to get longer in January, and winter sports are always fun. But I digress. 2010 is going to be a year of some major changes for me, and for this blog too.

Essentially it’s all summed up by the image above.

I have a decision to make on how much time to spend in London (best business), Berlin (best quality of life) and Brussels (compromise between the two). Beyond that how much time do I spend on the professional training aspect of my work, explaining to people how the EU works and how to lobby it, versus the website design and the development of techPolitics LLP?

For sure I cannot keep on doing all I have been doing; I’ll go crazy if I do. But what has to give?

I also need to spend more time in the same place meaning ideally at least 7 uninterrupted days a month in Brussels if I can. I also want to improve my diving and skate an inline skate marathon in 1 hour 20 sometime over the next 12 months. There’s also the small matter of a UK general election and what campaigning role I can manage to play.

On the blog front I need to better divide up the topics that interest me – I already have Euroblog and Sportblog, but a division between politics and technology is also in order. I also should spend some more time on some more considered pieces for Left Foot Forward, Social Europe Journal and others. And all of that will necessitate some changes to this blog over the next 12 months, although it’s not top of my to-do list just yet.

Plus who knows what might await in 2010… 2009 started with atheist buses on the streets of London, and ended with a campaign for a Gender Balanced Commission. In short 2010 obliges me to make some choices but there will be plenty of fun things too, and as ever I’ll do my best to cover most of it on the blog here.

Photo credits: Brussels CC / Flickr, London CC / Flickr, Berlin CC / Flickr, EU flag CC / Flickr, Macbook keyboard CC / Flickr

I’m in the middle of finalising all of the business arrangements for techPolitics LLP, the new company for my website work. One aspect of that is VAT registration, and my accountants need an authorisation code from HM Revenue and Customs. Rather surprising then to collect my post and find 13 copies, yes 13, of the very same letter, all posted on the same day and all arriving on the same day… and all posted business second class, and hence all very delayed by the Christmas post. 1 copy, sent 1st class, would have been far preferable!

So what about the internet? The BBC has been at the forefront of online broadcasting with many of its radio channels available online all the time, and TV programmes available on iPlayer. Yet this has also meant a blanket ban on some broadcasts and services outside the UK. Any football commentary on Radio 5 is UK only and on Saturday Live on Radio 4 this morning they had the temerity to read out a reader’s letter complaining that Saturday Live podcasts were not available to users outside the UK. Well, the presenter said with a chuckle, that’s because you don’t pay the license fee!

Hold on a minute. People outside the UK do not pay the fee, but we also do not have the opportunity to do so. There is a crude distinction: if you’re in the UK you get all BBC programmes because you pay the license fee. If you’re outside the UK you must be someone the BBC can patronise with lousy rubbish, leftovers, like BBC World News or remnants of the empire like BBC World Service. I live in Belgium most of the time, 1 hour 51 minutes from London by train – so closer to BBC television centre than half of the UK. I want all the BBC services a British resident should be able to get, and if there were a way to pay for that then I would be willing to do so – I’m one of the people that like the BBC. But there is no way.

There are ways around some of the restrictions – using Foxyproxy to make iPlayer think you live in the UK (video of how to do it here), and having a UK iTunes account so as to access podcasts that way. But this is breaking the rules to get what you want because the BBC seems to treat everyone beyond the British Isles differently. It’s frustrating.

Queue - CC / Flickr

Someone jumps the queue at a crowded Eurostar terminal at Gare du Midi.

A driver does not indicate and almost knocks me off my bike when he turns unexpectedly.

Someone parks a car on a zebra crossing meaning it’s impossible for pedestrians to cross.

A passenger barges into a carriage on the London Underground without letting the passengers off first.

Cyclists that do not respect red lights and mow down pedestrians.

But what do you actually do about these sorts of things? I know for sure I am not the only one who gets annoyed, and in the Eurostar queue jumping case I could see other passengers bristling with annoyance. So I have now simply taken to talking to the people breaking the rules. If those individuals do not know what the social norm is, or they do not read the body language of the others around, then they need to be told what should happen. So a short “on respecte la file ici” to the Eurostar man sent him to the back of the queue. A short “est-ce que vous savez pourquoi les voitures ont des clignotants?” through the open window of a car that’s not respecting the rules might have a small impact. A carefully placed shoulder or bag tends to do the trick when leaving an underground carriage. Some day someone will probably turn around and hit me when I do all of this but it at least has not happened yet.

I still do not get why people behave like this though. The ball is almost always in the other court. The queue jumper is someone who is also sometimes at the front of queues. The driver who doesn’t use indicators is also surely confused by other drivers. Cyclists are sometimes pedestrians. And the underground passenger who barges on also needs to be able to get off. Surely it doesn’t take a genius to realise that to do unto others as you would want done to yourself is not a bad rule for social interaction in cities?