Robin Wilson: Bid for a day’s work from me

Summary: I will do a day’s work for the highest bidder in this auction. This could mean you get a day’s work from me very cheaply. Please read all of this post carefully, and then submit your bid here before 5th Feb.This experiment is based very heavily on David MacIver’s experiment in auctioning off a day’s work (see his blog posts introducing it , and summarising the results ). It seemed to work fairly well for him, and I am interested to see how it will work for me.So, if you win this auction, I will do one day (8 hours) of work for you, on a project of your choosing. If you’ve been following this blog then you’ll have a reasonable idea of what sort of things I can do – but to jog your memory, here are some ideas:

• Working on an open-source project: I could work to add features to, fix bugs in, or document, an open-source project of mine – probably eitherPy6S or recipy .
• Pair programming: I could work with you to write some code – it could be code to do pretty-much anything, but I’m most experienced in data science, geographical data processing, computer vision, remote sensing/GIS and similar areas.
• Programming: I could write some code by myself, to do a reasonably-simple task of your choosing, providing the well-documented code for you to use or develop further. As above, this could be anything, but would work best if it were in my areas of expertise.
• Data science: I could do some analysis of a reasonably simple dataset for you, providing well-documented code to allow you to extend the analysis.
• GIS/Remote Sensing: I could perform some remote sensing/GIS analysis on a dataset, potentially producing well-designed maps as outputs.
• Teaching: I could work with you, online or in person, to help you understand a topic with which I am familiar – for example, Python programming, data science, computer science, remote sensing, GIS and so on.
• Review & comments: I could review and give comments on documents in my areas of expertise, for example, a draft paper, chapter of a thesis, or similar.

These are just a few ideas of things I could do – I am happy to do most things, although I will let you know if I think that I do not have the required expertise to do what you are requesting.

Rules

1. The bid is only for me to work for 8 hours, so I strongly suggest either a short self-contained project, or something that can be stopped at any point and still be useful. If you want me to continue working past 8 hours then I would be happy to negotiate some further work – but this would be entirely outside of the bidding process.
2. The 8 hours work will likely be split over multiple days: due to my health I find working for 8 hours straight to be very difficult, so I will probably do the work in two or three chunks. I am happy to do the work entirely independently, or to work in close collaboration with you.
3. If I produce something tangible as part of this work (eg. some code, some documentation) then I will give you the rights to do whatever you wish with these (the only exception being work on my open-source projects, for which I will require you to agree to release the work under the same open-source license as the rest of the project).
4. Following David’s lead, the auction will be a Vickrey Auction , where all bids are secret, and the highest bidder wins but pays the second highest bidder’s bid. This means that the mathematically best amount to bid is exactly the amount you are willing to pay for my time.
5. If there is only one bidder, then you will get a day of my work and pay nothing for it.
6. If there is a tie for top place then I will pick the work I most want to do, and charge the highest bid.
7. The auction closes at 23:59 UTC on the 5th February 2019. Bids submitted after that time will be invalid.
8. The day of work must be claimed by the end of March 2019. I will contact the winner to arrange dates and times. I will send an invoice after the work is completed, and this must be paid within 30 days.
9. If your company wants to bid then I am happy to invoice them after the work is complete and, within reason, jump through the necessary hoops to get the invoice paid.
10. If you wish me to work in-person then I will invoice you for travel costs on top of the bid payment. Work can only be carried out in a wheelchair accessible building, and in general I would prefer remote work.
11. If you ask me to do something illegal, unethical, or just something that I firmly do not want to do, then I will delete your bid. If you would have been one of the top bidders then I will inform you of this.
12. After the auction is over, and the work has been completed, I will post on this blog a summary of the bids received, the winning bid and so on.

To go ahead and submit your bid, please fill in the form here .

Categorised as: Academic , Computing , GIS , My Software , Programming , Py6S , Python , Remote Sensing