It seems like everyone is a consultant on here, I am a student myself, I am slightly interested in becoming a consultant upon graduation, so was wondering why there are so many consultants using airtable? How, why etc… do you use it as a consultants?
I didn’t start out seeking be a consultant. I just wanted to use Airtable to get more organized. However, I like solving problems, and I like helping other people solve problems, and after a while of learning Airtable and helping with issues here in the community, people started asking for my help on the side. I’m not pushing the Airtable consulting side much, in part because I’m about to start a new full-time job in just under a week that will definitely keep me hopping, but I enjoy squeezing it in where I’m able.
As far as how I use Airtable as a consultant (aside from the direct consulting of using the software), I mainly use it for invoicing and project/task management.
This is a biased conclusion and tilted toward your assertion for many reasons. Let’s probe the true nature of your observation with basic economics.
When typical business users encounter problems, they look for help in the forum. That help typically comes from – wait for it – consultants who are trying to impress future clients. :winking_face: You don’t hear about all the successes that users are able to achieve without any forum help whatsoever. Ergo, the vast base of conversations is heavily tilted by responses from consultants because all the stuff that works well is rarely discussed here.
Consultants are more conversational because they are looking for work. This results in a high incidence of visibility in the forum by people who build systems as opposed to people who are simply Airtable customers and enjoy the delightful user interface and features.
In any technology, consultants and after-market vendors rush in to fill the voids left by the technology creator. Despite Airtable’s calendar maturity, it is still an adolescent in terms of many of its technical abilities. This is manifest by a very high incidence of workarounds - some of which are arguably insane.
In my case - and perhaps many cases - I am drawn to Airtable because my clients have pulled me here. They love it for it’s democratized accessibility and simple sharing model. It provides largely non-technical people information management solutions they crave and that their own businesses find affordable and luxurious. But, it has some very low ceilings in terms of meeting customized process requirements. Indeed, it has drawbacks that are not easily overcome without integration or clever approaches which explains the high incidence of people who lean on Zapier and Integromat.
Hi there –
I work for a business and we started using Airtable to run it. I hadn’t even heard of it before. I used this forum while I was setting things up and was more busy with its maintenance, mostly whenever I hit my head against the product’s limitations. I’ve been away for a while but I’d generally consider myself one of the more power-ish users that are part of this community, as I’ve done and continue to do some pretty nice advancey things with Airtable, but definitely not a consultant or an expert.
Adding to this answer:
There’s also the users who do find help in the forum by finding/adapting existing answers and not participating – no way to gauge whether they’re just a few or the majority of forum users in the widest sense of the word.
Going off topic, I would love to know what technologies, programming, or stuff I could learn to really become a power user and expand my ability to do awesome things with Airtable.
Indeed; the silent majority. They read; they learn; they adapt all sorts of answers to real problems and quietly move on. Good for them - that’s what a knowledgebase is for.
Zapier, Integromat, Javascript, and lastly perhaps Google Apps Script.
I am a college student myself, using Airtable to manage my current courses, courses I still need to take, and I link a lot of tables between assignments, professors, courses they teach, etc.
