racket-money email list?

[Neil Van Dyke]

What to you think about this idea?...

I'm thinking it might be good to have a forum for commercial use of
Racket (consultants, employees, employers) to compare notes amongst
themselves, with a bit more privacy, and a lot lower traffic than the
current email lists.

I'm thinking a new email list, limited to the topic of non-university
making money with Racket, not archived.  It could be hosted by Google
Groups, in their email-only mode, or I could host it from from my vanity
domain.

I don't know whether this would take off at all (an email list for
Racket consultants only, a few years ago, quickly fizzled, IIRC), but I
was thinking it might be worth a try.

I'm not married to the idea of making this a private list, nor even
separate from the "racket-users" list.  Maybe the same
information-sharing benefit could be gotten by encouraging people to
talk about money-making on "racket-users" anytime, or having a periodic
thread for that purpose.  (I suppose I might be the only person, in an
era of even children carefully managing Facebook and Twitter PR facades,
who'd consider speaking more candidly in a smaller online forum.)

Comments?

P.S., How can we not have something called "racket-money"?  :)

[Paulo Matos]

Let me just top-post my reply... :)

Although I am not sure how I could contribute to the list yet, I like
the idea. I am working on a commercial project in racket and would
certainly be happy to hear others thoughts on pragmatic business issues
like selling racket software, customer apprehension, libraries to ease
customer code inspection and debugging, etc.

On the other hand, it might be it's just the two of us actually trying
to squeeze money out of racket, in which case it might fizzle out. :)

If something like this exists, it should definitely imo be non-archived
(which makes it a reason not to have it with racket-users). As a list
for the business/commercial side of racket there will be questions that
might come up and that should not be searchable or public on the wide
internet where finding stuff about someone else is a click away.
Or a list where all publicly archived posts are anonymous... but I have
never seen anything like that or know if it's possible to achieve it
properly.

Happy to hear from others,

Paulo

--
Paulo Matos

[Greg Hendershott]

I'd sign up and participate, whether it were wide-open like
racket-users or something invite-only and "private"-ish.


For a few months now, I've had a small, (barely) commercial web app
that is all Racket plus Postgres hosted on AWS and using Stripe:

https://deals.extramaze.com/

I don't have any non-technical concerns about using Racket for a
hosted web app. After all, my customers don't need to know or care.
It's different form asking customers to install/use Racket code
locally, and/or proposing as a consultant that clients use Racket. I
don't need to "sell" Racket per se.

Also, part of why I'm using Racket is precisely to postpone as long as
possible needing to hire employees or consultants. ;) What I mean: My
goal isn't to Build a Company, it's to have something <1 person can
build and maintain and (hopefully) get some modest revenue. More in
the spirit of IndieHackers.com. For me Racket is a kind of "force
multiplier".


Having said all that, I'd definitely enjoy talking with other
commercial users of Racket, of any kind! I'd try to offer as much
feedback and ideas as anyone wanted me to (or not).

[Greg Hendershott]

p.s. Although I'd be fine using a mailing list, I could see using
Slack for this? IIUC, if you don't pay for it, it's archived only up
to the X most-recent messages. But maybe that's still too much
retention for people.

[je...@lisp.sh]

I'd be interested in such a list, too. 

My own thoughts mirror Greg's. Racket as a commercial thing, for me, these days, consists in building web sites with it, where the customers don't really care to know (if the thought even occurs to them) what the tech is that underlies the thing they're using. I've got an ebook about Racket's web server (https://serverracket.com), which is made with the help of Pollen, which I suppose counts in some way.

[Neil Van Dyke]

Thanks to Paulo, Greg, and Jesse for their comments.

I bet we'll get even more interest once announced on "racket-users".

If -- speak now, or forever hodl your peacecoins -- there are no
objections to making a separate "racket-money" email list, on the topic
of "making money with Racket, discussed in a more intimate setting",
then 3 questions:

1. Host it as a Google Groups non-archived email list, or as a somewhat
more private MailMan email list at my vanity domain hoster?  (In either
case, Google already gives themselves permission to scrape individual
GMail users' emails, there will probably be at least one @gmail.com user
on the list, and who knows in what ways information will effectively
leak that way, so I'm not sure that hosting the list myself gives any
significant additional privacy.) (I personally don't want to use Slack
unless I'm being paid to.)

2. What, if any, gatekeeping should be done on joining the list, to
encourage people to be more candid than they might be on, say, a
Facebook post?  I suspect the main problem is the multitude of Web sites
that simply mirror email lists -- normally, they just clutter search
results, but even one of them sneaking in would violate the expected
privacy.  I'm inclined not to gatekeep individuals, and I'd also like to
encourage people like undergrads contemplating a startup to join the
list, so long as everyone understands that talk on the list remains
confidential.  One idea is that people could email to ask to be put on
the list, or should go to a Web form to ask to join and wait for
moderator approval.  Another idea is that people could join by posting a
message introducing themselves to the list, and then a moderator adds
them to the list and the introductory post goes through to the list,
which doubles as introducing people.  I'd prefer we didn't need a human
in the loop, but maybe that's the simplest way to keep a Web list
archiver out. I'd like something simple that helps the list achieve its
goal, not a barrier/burden/annoyance.

3. Who wants to volunteer to co-administer to the email list?  Just to
do whatever gatekeeping of joining from question #2, not to moderate
posts or anything like that.  I can volunteer, but we need at least 1
more, in case of bus.

(Feels off to write that much about trying to maintain a modicum of
privacy for perhaps a dozen people with very light traffic, but maybe
that's because any nonzero degree of privacy is becoming unfamiliar. :)

BTW, I'm probably soon moving out of the jet-setting/sofa-setting world
of independent technical consulting, to somewhere that I can focus on
solving technical problems without all the extra work of also running a
small business by myself.  But even though my day job probably will no
longer involve making money with Racket, I'll remain interested in the
great Racket community, and in using Racket for personal projects.

[Paulo Matos]

On 15/03/18 07:23, Neil Van Dyke wrote:
>
> 1. Host it as a Google Groups non-archived email list, or as a somewhat
> more private MailMan email list at my vanity domain hoster?  (In either
> case, Google already gives themselves permission to scrape individual
> GMail users' emails, there will probably be at least one @gmail.com user
> on the list, and who knows in what ways information will effectively
> leak that way, so I'm not sure that hosting the list myself gives any
> significant additional privacy.) (I personally don't want to use Slack
> unless I'm being paid to.)
>

I generally dislike Google Groups but I also don't know much about how
they work and the amount of privacy they offer so I will go with your
statement that they offer as much privacy as mailman and say that I
don't care. On the other hand, if people are leaning towards a mailman
solution, lets set that up. If you feel that it's too big a burden for
you, I can arrange something using my company's servers.

> 2. What, if any, gatekeeping should be done on joining the list, to
> encourage people to be more candid than they might be on, say, a
> Facebook post?  I suspect the main problem is the multitude of Web sites
> that simply mirror email lists -- normally, they just clutter search
> results, but even one of them sneaking in would violate the expected
> privacy.  I'm inclined not to gatekeep individuals, and I'd also like to
> encourage people like undergrads contemplating a startup to join the
> list, so long as everyone understands that talk on the list remains
> confidential.  One idea is that people could email to ask to be put on
> the list, or should go to a Web form to ask to join and wait for
> moderator approval.  Another idea is that people could join by posting a
> message introducing themselves to the list, and then a moderator adds
> them to the list and the introductory post goes through to the list,
> which doubles as introducing people.  I'd prefer we didn't need a human
> in the loop, but maybe that's the simplest way to keep a Web list
> archiver out. I'd like something simple that helps the list achieve its
> goal, not a barrier/burden/annoyance.
>

This is a hard one but I think that for this kind of low-membership list
I would go with an introduction form that would be moderated and if it's
not spam, it's sent to the list. Once in the list, the members of the
list can +1 or thumbs up and unless someone would be totally against it,
we could accept the person. We should not allow people to send emails
straight to the list because... *spam*.

> 3. Who wants to volunteer to co-administer to the email list?  Just to
> do whatever gatekeeping of joining from question #2, not to moderate
> posts or anything like that.  I can volunteer, but we need at least 1
> more, in case of bus.
>

I am happy to help.
Would it be possible to somehow block cross-posting to the list? I.e.
block posting to racket-money and racket-users for example? I fear that
one day a mistake will be made by replying to a post on racket-money
with data that should stay private and it ends up on all the
cross-posted lists.

> (Feels off to write that much about trying to maintain a modicum of
> privacy for perhaps a dozen people with very light traffic, but maybe
> that's because any nonzero degree of privacy is becoming unfamiliar. :)
>
> BTW, I'm probably soon moving out of the jet-setting/sofa-setting world
> of independent technical consulting, to somewhere that I can focus on
> solving technical problems without all the extra work of also running a
> small business by myself.  But even though my day job probably will no
> longer involve making money with Racket, I'll remain interested in the
> great Racket community, and in using Racket for personal projects.
>

Good luck with that. :) Maybe you can write up when you find sometime
about whatever you learned regarding using racket in a business setting?
Maybe make that the first post to the list.


--
Paulo Matos

[Neil Van Dyke]

'Paulo Matos' via Racket Developers wrote on 03/15/2018 03:14 AM:
> I generally dislike Google Groups but I also

I have a healthy skepticism of Google (which many people are afraid to
say, because they want funding/employment/acquisition from Google), but
Google Groups with archiving disabled currently works just like an
old-school email list / listserv, with no archive or Web interface.

> Once in the list, the members of the list can +1 or thumbs up and
> unless someone would be totally against it, we could accept the person.

I don't know of any software already set up to make that voting easy.

One general thing I've noticed, in various places: if an online
community doesn't advertise itself, or is not very easy to join, it soon
becomes stale.  There will be attrition, and it is important to keep
bringing in new members, or it will either go silent, or (if chatty) end
up just a few old-timers re-telling the same stories to each other. 
This entropy is *not*, I think, like businesses, economies, and monetary
systems that are set up to always require growth, but more like villages
that need to keep reproducing, and to keep doing intermarriage with
other villages.

> Maybe you can write up when you find sometime about whatever you
> learned regarding using racket in a business setting? Maybe make that
> the first post to the list.

Sure: with Racket as a force multiplier, a few PhDs and (very
good-looking, superstar) software engineers and DevOps people can
accomplish what 3 times that number of Java people probably could not.
:)  What I think Racket needs now, if commercial uptake is a good thing,
is for undergrad Y Combinator startups to do their first implementation
in Racket, and then tell other startups how that helped them get to
prototype/launch, and contribute back some open source.

[Kyle Spaans]

I'm also interested in joining the list. I don't currently consult with Racket, but would be more than happy to start! I don't have strong opinions about Google Groups vs mailman, but I agree that moderating new members is a good solution at the beginning. I'd be willing to help moderate the intro posts.

[Alexander McLin]

I've been quiet up till now since I wanted to just process what everyone was saying first.

I am interested in joining this new mailing list since first using Racket in my daily job, it has been a significant force multiplier for me, to borrow Neil's phrase. I am not a consultant but would interested in developing consulting experience on the side while using Racket.

[Matthew Butterick]

On Wednesday, February 28, 2018 at 8:16:12 AM UTC-8, Neil Van Dyke wrote:

What to you think about this idea?...

I'm thinking it might be good to have a forum for commercial use of
Racket (consultants, employees, employers) to compare notes amongst
themselves, with a bit more privacy, and a lot lower traffic than the
current email lists.

I'm not clear why privacy / secrecy would be beneficial for a list like this (or how it would even be possible). 

[Neil Van Dyke]

We have at least 2 people who say that (for whatever reason) they might
speak more candidly in a forum that's not, say, publicly archived.  If
those people participate more in such a less-public forum than they
would in a more-public forum, I'd say having the less-public forum is
beneficial in that regard.  (One could argue that there'd be greater
benefit by sharing info publicly, but I'd say that racket-users already
provides that option -- one could say that racket-money provides an
option to share info less-publicly that otherwise wouldn't be shared at
all.)

I think the privacy is plausibly possible, if we tell everyone from the
start that discussion on the list is expected to be private, and we
expect people to respect that.

We'll see how it goes.  I figure it's worth a try.

(Coincidentally, I just finished adding "racket-money" to Google Groups,
thinking the comments had all come in.  I decided to simplify.  Will
post about it shortly.)