Do you need some help

If you've got an idea that can work on the web, I'd love to spend one to two days with you trying to get your thing off the ground.

Here’s who I am

I’m a web develoeper who has been building websites professionally for 13 years in Chicago Illinois and Berkeley California. My focus is building websites for people with disabilities.

Here’s what I’m offering

Hosting small simple websites became basically free for people with some development skills. I just want to spread that around.

So the brass tacks of it is, if you’re in Chicago and want to hang out and spend a day or two working on something with me trying to get your project in it’s first few stages of functioning, that’d be fun for me. I’m espcially keen to work with artists, parents, theater folk, musicians and anyone else trying to stand up a new idea or career.

In exchange, I want a couple of specific things

  1. For the day or two that we’re working on this together I’d like a bottomless coffee and lunch at the Long Room (probably a breakfast sandwich with potatoes or a burger and fries).
  2. You to say “Eric Mikkelsen got me started on this”, if people ask about it. Maybe even a reference.
  3. The ability to say I worked on it with you.

This is a one or two day thing

My goal is to get you off the groud for the cost of one or two lunches. If you dig what I did for you, I’d be happy to work for some additional money, also you’ll have the keys to the work I’ve done for you from the start. The only thing I need afterwards is to be able to talk about it and put it in my portfolio.

Here’s some stuff I’m bad at

I’ve sat next to and worked with some great people who work in SEO and content strategy. But I don’t do those things professionally, I might be able to guide you a little bit on what to search for or ask an LLM about.

Draw some stuff before you see me.

Bring really bad drawings of what you think you need. Don’t feel the need to gussy it. How ever you can make a picture including hand drawings on the backs of receipts is great.

If you want to get started

Send me an email with something like “I’d love some help” in the subject line, and say whatever you’d like in the body.

  1. What’s the big idea?
  2. Is this a tool or a site for you to show off your work?
  3. Do you need to be able to take peoples’ money?
  4. Will you need pictures or copy written?
  5. Do you have a technology stack already in mind?