Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)

It does seem like this would be a lot easier if there were also chat (or even if it were chat-only). If you're talking about code, it would be really helpful to be able to paste in snippets or links to resources.

Thanks for the ups guys.<p>As I said on the site I owe a lot of our success to the generous spirit of the open source community and wanted to give a little back.<p>If you're interested in volunteering to take calls: <a href="http://www.railshotline.com/apply.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.railshotline.com/apply.html</a>

Reading this and pockethotline.com, and thinking about your offer to help set up other community hotlines: what about a Founders Hotline? Call to talk to a real live business founder, whether to get some advice, get a recommendation or opinion for a particular service, bounce an idea or pitch off someone for feedback, or just get a different perspective. And the "experts" would get the benefit of hearing from some interesting people doing interesting things, and having a nice conversation with a fellow founder, as well as the recognition and networking you mentioned elsewhere.

So, I guess this is like going to Freenode#RubyOnRails, but for people who don't know what IRC is?<p>You should absolutely, totally, utterly figure out a way to charge for this service.

Seems like a promising idea, and I have no absolutely intention of knocking it.<p>But ... you have to admit that it's a wide-open target for parody: picture the earnest young Rails beginner calling (from Chennai, of course) and getting DHH. From there it slides into some kind of ChatRoulette nightmare involving DHH, _why, Zed ("fuck this shit! Just use Python"), a werewolf, ...

This is a neat idea and I commend you for the effort this has taken and will continue to take. I have some questions for you about how you perceive people using the service:<p>How do you bridge the code-to-voice gap; that is, someone calling in with a question about coding and you have to describe something that requires a lot of code syntax. Do you pass that off to some sort of e-mail type discussion or screen-sharing process, anything like that?<p>This seems like it could be a great consulting-style opportunity, but also an awesome way to get new developers over the stumbling blocks they experience commonly when picking up new languages.<p><i>edit</i> My curiosity on this stems from past experience, doing phone-based coding or tech support to family or friends - it has always been a major challenge for me to verbally describe some more complex tasks, and 9 times out of 10 I find myself saying, "you know what - I'll just swing by and show you, it'll be a lot easier and faster for the both of us". (I am not a very good auditory learner/processor - I need tactile or visual assistance, and teach others better using the same methods.)

Neat idea.<p>What do you suggest for non-US volunteers (and callers, although I suspect that is harder to solve, at least for free)?

Idea:Record calls and make them available to others through the website. Less repetition of questions and you will be available to have a much wider outreach.

The Rails community is serious about outreach. Good on ya!

Just used the service and had a great chat with Chap, one of the founders. There's something qualitatively different when you're talking to someone using voice - it makes it easier to articulate some of the bigger questions that aren't just syntax or "help me debug this" type of questions. Anyway, I think this is a great idea, and love that these guys are making it happen. Kudos.

Wow. I saw this and thought, 'genius.' What's it going to cost.. $50/ 20 minutes.. that would be more than fair for an expert.<p>FREE?????

If you can think of a way to bring this together with railsmentors.org, ping me. I'd love to see what we could do.

These guys are brave!

Ok so how many prank calls have you gotten? Anyone mistakenly call thinking it was a phone sex number?? Rails does have a lot of connotations...

I'm not sure if it was intentional or not (to grab attention) but the blue text with drop shadow on that red background hurts my eyes.

I called, no hold time. Good stuff. Though I am an excellent holder.

Called and was walked through my problem with a working solution!

What is a rail shot?

do they offer quiche as well?

Has Rails become so complex that people need a hotline?