An agent can be a person on a secret mission in a foreign country. It can also mean an intermediate between business partners. When you work as a free agent in web development, like I do here in Sweden, both explanations seems to be right. Technically, a free agent is a person with who sells his or her talent on the market to companies who need the talent for work to get done. But it is also a mission where we shall change the world as we now know it. Really! There's a lot of talking about the new economy and how we shall live and work tomorrow. A lot of new articles, magazines, lectures and, of course, people who are making careers for themselves just talking about IT! But what is it?

During my first year as a free agent I have discovered that it hasn't so much to do about HTML or dynamic websites like most people, including myself one year ago, think it is. It is all about people and relations, more than anything else. You can always get information about how the technology works by reading about it, but the people-skills you need have to come from within. Having such skills requires continuous training and nourishing. You can always learn more, meet more people to connect to and there are always different point of views to explore. It's all about human beings, and the processes in which we all interact with each other and technology.

One truly marvelous thing about being a free agent is that it's you yourself who decides that you would like to be one. You don't have to have anyone's approval. It's what you do and have done that is important. You must enable people to reach you through email, cell-phone or whatever. Then you jump into the game and start to play! The next opportunity is waiting around the corner, in your mail, or comes from the next person you meet.

A free agent must be prepared to meet interesting and important people everywhere. I find it much more interesting to talk business to people who are not at all in my field, preferably I want to talk to those who are not interested at all in e-business or computers. I am always "working" at parties and all sorts of places where I can meet people. Job opportunities move in mysterious ways and you'll sometimes not know what has led up to that interesting mail in your mailbox or that phone call. What I do know is that my way of networking has worked for me, and that there is some universal law that says that my job opportunities depend on how well I handle my networking.

A lot of good work is being done because the laws of business have been changed. But there are also a lot of difficulties because we are working and also making the new rules at the same time. I have had to make some hard decisions where I have had to choose my own survival over someone else's. There are people whom I think about and wonder how they're doing right now, and I am always wondering if my choice to stop working with them was the right thing to do. In the market you have to do the right thing at the right price, and with the right people. But you're never sure of anything. Maybe I lost something on the way.

In my agent-point-of-view, there are two questions I ask myself every day:

Who am I?

What would I like to do now?

Copyright © 2000 Carin Nordstrom All Rights Reserved

Carin Nordstrom lives and work in Stockholm, Sweden with web development as a free agent. (Webpage: http://solleron.bizland.com). She works with the Swedish management group AntColony, which functions as a manager for free agents working in web business.