Note: This is an old draft but with a recent development, so I’m going to post my old draft and add to it.

There are several factors that I look for in a web partner:
1. He/she must be interested in developing in the same language as you.
2. He/she must be of relatively equal skill so that you both learn from each other. You may not be equal in terms of development skill but I believe your skills have to compliment your partner’s so that you both have relatively equal value in the relationship.
3. He/she must be have relatively equal passion regarding the topic the website being developed is for.
4. He/she must be have relatively equal motivation to work on the site, otherwise you have a person doing too much and a person doing too little.

What I believe is that, much like a give and take relationship, things must be fair. It does not mean that every task must be fairly or equally shared but as a whole, both people should compliment each others strengths and weaknesses.

Throughout my entire web career, since the middle/end of high school and still ongoing, I’ve been looking for that partner. Given the requirements above, I imagine it might be harder to find a good web partner than finding a significant other! Or maybe I’m not looking in the right places…

In high school, my friend and I wanted to work on a website together. He was sort of into web, much like me. We talked frequently about it but nothing ever happened. I stopped waiting and eventually did my own stuff.
In university and the same thing happened (with another friend). This time, the guy actually had his own web stuff, he migrated his content over to my already existing hosting…and then, never touched the stuff again O_O
Note that both of these are my good friends whom I’m still close with. The first one moved in to something unrelated to web, the second one is currently doing Microsoft SharePoint stuff.

I guess the first guy didn’t have 1, 2, and 4. The second guy didn’t have 3 and 4.

I gotta say, it’s tough. I’m still looking…there have been a few potential candidates recently but nothing seemed to work out. Maybe I didn’t sell that I was looking well enough…

Anyways, I’m posting this because the first guy, from high school, wants a website built. And as of today, I’m going to work with him on it. He’s not interested in the design or development, he will be the relationship between the business and I. I just found it kind of interesting that about a decade after we originally wanted to work together, we finally are. The stakes are higher this time though, it’s not just children playing, we’re both doing this professionally. But I’m honestly really looking forward to working with my friend professionally on something like this. It’s like doing a high school project together…and I know he’s lacking in 1 but he’s got 2, 3 and 4 and in this dynamic, that’s all I want/need. And because he’s a close friend, I’m eager to really do my best and not let him down and I’m sure is opposite is true.

So I officially have a side project now.

I hope things go smoothly…I might ask this guy for a ride but will asking him for requirements work out? He might ask to borrow a game but will his asking when something will be done sour the friendship? While I agree that mixing professional and unprofessional relationships is a bad idea, we’re both aware of our respective working skills (from high school) and I think we both have that working trust in each other. What really sucks is mixing professional and unprofessional relationships when the unprofessional aspect doesn’t measure up to the professional. Going out for drinks with someone and working with someone are always two completely different things.

/4 (LFM): Sheaman: LF1M WEB DESIGNER/DEVELOPER
/4 (LFM): Sheaman: Must develop in PHP/ASP.NET. Know XHTML/CSS2. jQuery/HTML5/CSS3 a plus. Good Group. U Fail = Boot. /roll for loot. Mainspec > Offspec

(that’s my World of Warcraft version of Looking For 1 More)