Officehours - Connects you with amazing people, for one on one advice

@karj The design and the Ui has been mesmerising me and have become a huge fan. I have couple of technical questions and also some questions related to product. Is there any possible way to get responses to them. Any help would be really appreciated.

@p_shrihari Definitely—I’m happy to answer your questions. Feel free to ask them here, or, we can chat on Officehours, if you prefer: https://officehours.io/people/karj

@mrkevinhype Thanks—we’re pretty happy with it! The motivations for advisors vary. Here are a few thoughts on this point: Some are already helping others out in their everyday working lives. For them, Officehours provides an easier way to do so. By taking care of the scheduling, time zones, reminders, and the call itself, we save advisors some inconvenience. Plus, the fixed 10 minute time limit makes sessions pretty manageable. Others need a catch-all for requests they get that, which they aren’t sure about. For example, those calls you get from someone who wants to “pick your brain”—which you aren’t really sure you want to take. By sending all of these requests to Officehours, an advisor can deal with them at a time that’s convenient to him/her. If the call turns out to be positive, they can schedule another. If it’s a waste of time, the session is over pretty quickly. Yet others are building their careers and want to market/establish themselves as experts. Soon (within the next couple of weeks) we’ll add categories, which will sort advisors by area of expertise. Shortly thereafter, we’ll add in karma (we already collect data for this). Once these two items are in place, Officehours will become a sort of directory of trusted people in their respective fields. My hunch is that as this gains steam, those near the top of their respective categories will use their ranking to illustrate their influence/skill. (Sort of like someone with 50k followers on Twitter seems notable, someone who’s at the top of Marketing on Officehours will likely find interest from others.) Meanwhile, there’s the networking component of this. Networking is difficult. In an online setting, it’s impersonal, and in the real world, talking about business can seem weird at times. With Officehours, you’re supposed to talk about what you’re facing/working on. So, there’s little discomfort doing so. As a result, an advisor might talk to a young person who he/she is impressed with—and find in that person a prospect for a future hire. Or, he/she might help someone out who later wants to offer the advisor a career opportunity (this might seem implausible, but those in need of help today often move into leadership roles in not so long). Alternately, by helping out someone with a small problem, the advisor might be asked to help on an ongoing (paid) basis—so, consulting work, or ongoing projects. This last part is particularly interesting. Although we ask users to not pitch one another, I think the toughest part of getting new projects, is in not having trust. In 10 minutes, with the right advice, you can start to establish trust. And that can lead to new opportunities. Although you shouldn’t ask for them on Officehours, if you truly help others, they might ask you to join them in what they’re doing. More than anything, though, it just feels good to help others.

@brntsllvn Nice—thanks Brent! I think the service is pretty solid, but we do occasionally have call issues, and what-have-you. So, if you run into any problems, please let me know. We’re working hard to fix/improve things as quickly as possible.

@nelnel00 Thanks Christo—glad you like it. Have you requested any sessions, yet?

@lynnfredricks Definitely. In fact, we’ve already comped new profile pages that have a space specifically to mention languages. It’ll be a little while before we get to adding it (need to get categories, following, and mobile apps in place). That said, it’s certainly in the works. :-)

@nickabouzeid Yes—it’s nice to see the generosity of folks in general. Seems like there’s a lot of interest in helping others find their way. :-) We are working on a karma system (in fact, data is already being collected, for it) to weed out folks who aren’t acting in good faith. There’s no real need for us to mask user information, as the calls all happen through our system. As such, no email addresses nor phone numbers are listed in any part of the site.

@joeyroth Thanks! We have a long way to go, but I think it’s coming along alright. :-)

Hey Fabricio— I know you ran into some issues with the connection, and that all relates to firewalls, and how they restrict certain traffic. There are a few workarounds for this. The first is to have your IT department make some changes to what traffic can pass: http://wtf.officehours.io/help/n.... You can also connect through another wifi network—or transfer the call to your phone (that Transfer button is near the bottom of the screen). I hope this helps. :-) Eric