[thelist] Volunteering

[Nan Smith]

>1. How workable is volunteer work for a techie, from a
career perspective?

I have found volunteer web work to be very satisfying.
While unable to get a job doing web development with the
minimal experience I started with, I did other jobs and at
the same time, spend hours and hours working on volunteer
websites, learning and honing my skills while reading
TheList emails to improve my knowledge, like font tags
being deprecated, etc. I found that the organizations I
worked for were blown away by the level of sophistication
and functionality of what I have done for them. And, now I
can honestly say I have much more experience too. So doing
the volunteer work served a purpose for me.
I really hope we will eventually be able to get tax credit
for what we do for free. It would make so much sense! So
many organizations could benefit.

Sorry I don't have enough information for the other two
questions.

Nan