Agaric internal: internal funding during paid projects; own currency; and strategy notes

[Draft - internal policy thoughts shared with the world for openness - but not official at all]

Our rates and billing assume some amount amount of work for particular projects will go unpaid by the client.

In particular, we should budget 6 hours for pre-project work in acquiring a project and 12 hours making sure everything is awesome.

Those hours may change but let's keep that 1:2 ratio.

That is, i think this is important enough to build into Agaric: We pay for up to N hours of work trying to secure a good lead (at half rate if the lead doesn't come through), and we pay for 2N hours of work at the end of a project.

Our rate is $125. So at the usual 20% to the collective cut, $100 of every hour one works goes directly to the member who does the work.

That's the goal. Right now, the collective will take 40%, to ensure we're solvent with enough money to cover all costs not yet covered by clients, this pre- and post- project padding even when we're doing smaller projects, and sponsorships as we ramp up.

Agaric currency

Also TODO: use our own currency (spores?).

For real. Agaric should be the first web shop with its own fiscal policy.

This will make it easier for us to accept payment in barter, complementary currencies, or other forms: we decide as a collective what it is worth in Agaric spores.

Even if we have no money or anything of any form coming in, we can vote to create more for members in return for internal Agaric work done. (Ideally, work brings money into being, not fiat or the scarcity of some resource. That's getting beyond the power of one collective, but we can use our own currency to meet one of the main goals: preventing economic activity from grinding to a halt because no capitalist government money is sanctioned-- see the global economy. And we help build a saner, more just, more free world. See Douglas Rushkoff on hacking the economy for a taste of this idea.)

Other thoughts, on strategy:

We want our name attached to people's first experiences with Drupal. Although they'll probably later think they heard/saw Acquia!

"Agaric's preferred clients are large organizations looking to do something unique with Drupal while developing in-house high-level use or development skills."