Interested in starting an Asperger Development Group

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Bottom Line Up Front
I am interested in starting an Aspergers Development Group (ASG) – basically an alternative outsourcing model where the developers are people that are on the spectrum instead of the traditional model of outsourcing being to another physical location.

Why am I interested in doing this?

Well, there are a number of reasons so I will outline the key ones here
1. Selfish reason. My son has Aspergers and so I have an interest in creating employment opportunities for the future, and in improving the perception of those with Aspergers to NTs.
2. I honestly believe that Aspies have some of the most talented developers on the planet, and agree with Temple Grandin that the human race would not have progressed as quickly without some of these people. Why do many of them they have this ability?
a. They can remain passionately focused for long periods of time.
b. They think differently.
c. They have excellent attention to detail.
d. They have a clarity of thinking that is not common.

3. I believe Aspies can work very well in a remote environment because:
a. They often prefer limited face to face communication
b. They can structure the environment to their own special needs
c. They work well in literal environments, so emails tend to be well thought out and complete. If you want an example of this – look no further than this forum. The average length of post / response is much longer than you will find on most other sites, and the use of quoting and other methods to clarify is common.

4. I want to be able to provide a fair wage to people. As I see it (and please feel free to correct me), many Aspies have a hard time in the traditional work environment and therefore do not flourish there. As such they either have a hard time holding down a regular job or they are undervalued, underpaid and have a hard time advancing. My expectation is that this group would share any profits among themselves, value each other for what they are, and promote people based on their abilities and not because they play golf and hang out with the boss at the bar.

5. Companies are already changing from the model of “this is how we do things, so get on board” to being much more in tune with fitting in with the needs of their staff. I see this as a natural extension of that.

How do I see it working?

I have been in the software development space for many years, and have many contacts that I plan to use to obtain work.
My ideal would be to provide consultants, business analysts etc. that are not necessarily on the spectrum to act as the client facing arm of the group. They would obtain the work from clients (anything from SMBs to large organizations), perform the necessary analysis to define and document the requirements clearly, and then allocate that work to the ASG.
Strong governance around work allocations and deadlines would need to be maintained, but how the work is done (when people work, where, etc.) would be left up to the members of the ASG.

I could go on but, for now, I just wanted to put this out there and get some feedback from people on whether they would be interested in participating in such a model. Please feel free to post your ideas, concerns etc.

Thank you.

FWIW, I suggest you follow Michael Drejer on Twitter at http://twitter.com/maialideth; also follow http://twitter.com/AspergerCoach. You can ask Michael if he can remember the service that promotes Asperger employment -- not his company, but someone else on Twitter.

Yeah this sounds very interesting.

Keep us in the loop when you get started. There is a man in...um...Denmark?? I'm not sure, but whose son has AS and he started a business (brick and mortar) to employ those on the spectrum.

And the placement company in Britain that I think Alpabetania is referring to is Prospects, a project created by the National Autistic Society and the British government. I think it's based in Glasgow. I think Tony Attwood writes about it on p.299 of 'Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome'. Fascinating!

Thanks.

I have one development need already brewing. This is something I have been thinking about developing for some time but, since I no longer program (at least not in anything that would be useful in this case) I am going to need to outsource that.

Normally I would have found someone in India (or similar) to do this and paid them. I am thinking that now I would like to give this a shot and either pay someone in the ASG or offer them an equity stake in the company for their efforts. The idea is still being thrashed out but I would love to make this the first project for this group.

[quote="houldsworth1"]Bottom Line Up Front
I am interested in starting an Aspergers Development Group (ASG) – basically an alternative outsourcing model where the developers are people that are on the spectrum instead of the traditional model of outsourcing being to another physical location.

Your proposed idea sounds very interesting! I have a masters in my field but am stuck as a grocery store cashier. It's most depressing ... and a lot more social interaction than I strictly need on a daily basis. Sometimes it's terribly overwhelming. I would love to be able to do work for a company (I'm particularly skilled in research) on an "outsource" basis, as my spouse and I don't really want to move right now (nor can we afford to do so).

I can't decide if it would be beneficial or not to tell a company upfront that I'm an Aspie. I told some of my current supervisors, but I don't think most of them "got" it.

Thank you for your response. I would probably pick and choose how I phrased it depending on the client. For clients where this would be seen as a benefit (perhaps because they would feel as though they were helping, or give them some sort of advantage in terms of government grants) then I would tell them. Otherwise I might just phrase it that we use highly skilled developers that prefer computers to people. I think a lot of people would actually understand that - let's face it, IT engineers have never had a great reputation for their social skills.

But we also need to be realistic here - the pay (at least until the model is proven) isn't going to be top dollar. But it should be better than working in a grocery store, with less need to travel and interact with ornery customers.

I actually have two ideas in mind right now:

One is a purely entrepreneurial venture - I have an idea for a social networking forum that I believe is not currently being tapped and has great potential for ad revenue. For that I need a few developers to help develop a web site, database, perform some analytical research, create matching algorithms and develop ad-ins to sites like Facebook (it's too big a target to ignore). If things work out then the revenues would be shared among those that developed the site.
This one has the advantage that it could most likely be done in people's spare time and, if things work out great, then perhaps they could give up their day job once the ad revenues arrive. Skills needed here would mostly be Linux knowledge, strong database knowledge (initially MYSQL) and Java.

The second one is that I am engaged with a vendor that is providing expert tools for master data management. Most of their work is currently outsourced to India, but I would like them to see the potential that exists closer to home. I will be talking with them about this next week. Strong DB skills (Any DB accessible via Java), XML and knowledge of pattern matching.

I would certainly love to hear from people interested in any of the above - feel free to ping me off of the forum if you are interested and think you can help.

Thanks!