A free job board for Vancouver web and tech heads

For a few months now, I’ve been working on a little side project named vancouverwebjobs.com. The basic premise was to create a free job board service for Vancouver web designers and techies. I played around with the idea of making it a pay board, but after some consideration I decided to go the ad supported route, and keep the actual board free. Some Vancouverites may remember the old lotusmodern.com job board from earlier in the decade. That board has been dead for awhile, so I thought I would step in and try and fill the void.

Free job postings for employers

Like I mentioned above, it will always be free for employers to post jobs at vancouverwebjobs.com. The board offers the following job categories: web design, web development, flash, web producers, open source, social media, mobile, and gaming.

Post a Job

Even more jobs on the blog

Along with the job board, I’ve launched a blog which will feature additional Vancouver jobs that don’t appear on the board. I also hope to provide some tips on finding a job, formatting a portfolio, and maybe even some resume templates. What else would you like to see from the blog?

Checkout the Blog

Want to get involved?

Vancouver is hub for awesome web and tech creatives. Therefore, I decided to include an open source category to, hopefully, promote the creation of new open source project in the community. However, it’s not just for new projects, if you have an existing project you need help with, please feel free to post it on the board. The only condition for the open source category is that all work is done for free, in the spirit of collaboration. Don’t worry, the projects will be monitored closely to make sure there are no craigslist jerks trying to get a full branding package in exchange for dog psychology services (seriously, I’ve seen that on there before). Please feel free to be creative.

Work in progress

The job board is still a work in progress, so please bear with me if you find any bugs. I would appreciate and feedback or feature requests, so please submit them if you have any. Thanks to the good people over at jobberbase.com (an open source project) for providing the job board framework, and I’m using good ol’ WordPress for the blog.

Subscribe

» idealist.org
non-profit whose mission is to connect people, non-profit organizations, and resources

» cluecan.ca
Canadian association for open source

» laconi.ca
Open source microblogging platform

» status.net
Coming soon – hosted, premium solution for the laconica platform

» openmicroblogging.org
An open standard for microblogging movement

» osbr.ca
“The Open Source Business Resource (OSBR) is a free monthly publication of the Talent First Network. The OSBR is for Canadian business owners, company executives and employees, directors of open source foundations, leaders of open source projects, open source groups, individuals and organizations that contribute to open source projects, academics and students interested in open source, technology transfer professionals, and government employees who promote wealth creation through innovation.”

» produingoss.com
Producing Open Source Software – How to run a successul, free open source project.

» codeigniter.com
Code Igniter is an open source PHP framework to help you build PHP programs.

» downforeveryoneorjustme.com
A simple little tool to see if website is down, or if it is a local problem.

» osalt.com
This is an open source project directory. Great place to start if you are new to open source.

How idealist.org uses technology to change the world

The best thing that came out of this session was learning about idealist.org, which is essentially a social network for non-profit organizations. The speaker, Michel Pelletier, went over the redesign they are currently working on, as well as an overview of what the website is about. If you are a programmer who is looking to work or volunteer in the non-profit sector, this is a great place to start.

Is the web down: a practical tutorial on how the web works

This was a great session for anyone (like myself) that doesn’t have a huge knowledge on how the inner tinkerings of the interweb work. The presenters, Michael Schwern and Joshua Keroes, did a great job of making it fun by using some props and keeping the mood light.

The guys covered topics like: troubleshooting your network, UDP, TCP, DNS (did you know there is only 13 domain name servers in the world and they’re all in the US? News to me), telnet, pinging, and traceroute. One of the more interesting things they quickly covered was the coming of custom TLDs. With in the year, we will probably start seeing these. Some examples would be www.mail.google, www.search.google, www.shoes.nike, etc… I’m looking forward to that hitting the net and all the new domain possibilities it will generate.

I sat in on a few other sessions today, but these were the two I enjoyed the most. The organizers of this event have a done a great job, especially considering it’s the first year! I’m looking forward to coming back next year, but for now it’s time to get some food and some beers!

» Check out the Open Source Bridge website

“Open Source Bridge is a new conference for developers working with open source technologies and for people interested in learning the open source way. It’s not a typical technical conference.

Here’s what makes it different: It’s entirely volunteer-run, by developers, for developers. This is the conference you’ve always wanted to attend. Session tracks are technology agnostic, based instead around shared community experiences and focused on similarities between projects, not differences. The geekery doesn’t end when the sessions do. There will also be a 24-hour hacker lounge for code sprints, bug bashes, session deep dives, bouncing ideas, starting new projects or just mingling and taking in the vibe.”

Microblogging with Laconica

Laconica is an open source microblogging platform. Founder, Evan Prodromou, gave straight forward presentation on what Laconica is and some of the things you can do with it. I left the session feeling excited about this software, and I’m looking forward to downloading it and playing around with it on my server.

Laconica is written in PHP and relies on MySql for the database end of things. Jabber is supported for IM, OpenID for authentication, and twitter integration that allows you to pass information back and forth. Currently they’re working on integration with Facebook and a paid, hosted service for the near future. This is definitely a piece of software to keep your eyes on.

Getting started in free and open source

This was a good intro to open source presented by Cat Allman and Leslie Hawthorne from Google. They touched on joining your first project, discussion etiquette, and general info about open source for newbies like myself. I’m going to write a more detailed post on this session in the near future. For now, I’ll leave you with this link of interest. producingoss.com is a great resource for your first open source project – from concept to completion.