A risk taker in the most risk-averse environment

I’m really struggling at the moment. I have a problem that every freelancer wants to have: too much work. I’m training people in EU politics every week, most of it in London. I’m running web and social media workshops for a variety of clients. And I’m trying to get websites online and delivered for as many clients as I possibly can. To make matters more complex the small website firm I use for hosting – uRevised – is about to close down.

So ideally I need to delegate work… but to whom, and how?

I’m working with Jan Seifert to setup techPolitics and that has taken some weight off my shoulders. But I would ideally need to find at least a few others with whom I could work – a freelance EU politics trainer, and some people that could do web projects. Not specifically programmers, but people who understand the internet and are sharp and bright. Importantly I do not want to just tell people what to do. I want to work with proactive people who will take responsibility themselves, be willing to build something, a kind of common endeavour.

I fear that the Brussels EU bubble is not really the place to find such people. Everyone is too concerned about the insecurity of being away from their home country. Getting a job in an institution with a solid income and pension seems to be the goal for far too many. It’s a golden cage in my view. The Belgian context does not help – becoming a freelancer in Belgium is complex – but those practical matters can be overcome. There is an enormous amount of Web 2.0 work around the EU institutions to do. Where are the people with whom to do it?

I feel very much like some odd risk taker in an extremely risk averse environment at the moment.