What you want to do is possible, but might take more than a few months -- think a year of sustained effort and attention. Building off of previous posted suggestions, if you have some decent web skills perhaps you might take a look at Drupal. There are an insane number of jobs, BUT you need to know what you are doing to get gigs. Drupal is very capable and powerful. It also has a steep learning curve and can be very frustrating to learn...which may inadvertently relate to why all of the jobs aren't filled. However, there are tons of free how-to screen casts, the community is very active, and you can learn at home. If you want to check it out I would suggest using the Acquia DAMP development stack as it is the easiest way to get setup on your home computer: https://network.acquia.com/downloads/7.x
I've noticed that a lot of the screen casts tend to be very pointed how-tos. If you don't mind paying $25 for a months access, Lynda.com has some good tutorials on Drupal 7 which may help you get a good overview. After doing the essential training you can see if Drupal clicks for you or not.
If you want to go the Drupal route, make a website for yourself as part of the learning process, do the normal networking things things like signup at Drupal.org and join LinkedIn and its various groups with interests similar to yours. Then look around locally and start making websites for people, small businesses, local charities, social groups, schools, local political candidates, etc. You might donate your time initially since you are learning, but get them to pay their own hosting fees. Participate in the Drupal community by submitting good bug reports, answer the questions of others when you have figured something out, attend meetings of the local user group, contribute to documentation, etc. By this time you will have gone through the process a few times and be able to leverage previous projects, have figured out hosting, and started to get a portfolio. Once you are an expert and have a portfolio, recruiters will start calling you.
The issue isn't "lobbying" per se, it is monetary contributions and the expectations that because of those contributions lawmakers will vote certain ways.
There is a continuum between making a donation to your perceived best candidate and buying votes. Without clear limits, rules and procedures to avoid conflict of interest we end up with a big gray area.
We bought an XServe and XRaid. Generally very happy with it. However, when it came time to renew the maintenance Apple told us that it was no longer available (we are about 1/5 hours from big city). Bye-bye Apple.
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What you want to do is possible, but might take more than a few months -- think a year of sustained effort and attention. Building off of previous posted suggestions, if you have some decent web skills perhaps you might take a look at Drupal. There are an insane number of jobs, BUT you need to know what you are doing to get gigs. Drupal is very capable and powerful. It also has a steep learning curve and can be very frustrating to learn...which may inadvertently relate to why all of the jobs aren't filled. However, there are tons of free how-to screen casts, the community is very active, and you can learn at home. If you want to check it out I would suggest using the Acquia DAMP development stack as it is the easiest way to get setup on your home computer: https://network.acquia.com/downloads/7.x
I've noticed that a lot of the screen casts tend to be very pointed how-tos. If you don't mind paying $25 for a months access, Lynda.com has some good tutorials on Drupal 7 which may help you get a good overview. After doing the essential training you can see if Drupal clicks for you or not.
If you want to go the Drupal route, make a website for yourself as part of the learning process, do the normal networking things things like signup at Drupal.org and join LinkedIn and its various groups with interests similar to yours. Then look around locally and start making websites for people, small businesses, local charities, social groups, schools, local political candidates, etc. You might donate your time initially since you are learning, but get them to pay their own hosting fees. Participate in the Drupal community by submitting good bug reports, answer the questions of others when you have figured something out, attend meetings of the local user group, contribute to documentation, etc. By this time you will have gone through the process a few times and be able to leverage previous projects, have figured out hosting, and started to get a portfolio. Once you are an expert and have a portfolio, recruiters will start calling you.
Good luck.
The issue isn't "lobbying" per se, it is monetary contributions and the expectations that because of those contributions lawmakers will vote certain ways.
There is a continuum between making a donation to your perceived best candidate and buying votes. Without clear limits, rules and procedures to avoid conflict of interest we end up with a big gray area.
We bought an XServe and XRaid. Generally very happy with it. However, when it came time to renew the maintenance Apple told us that it was no longer available (we are about 1/5 hours from big city). Bye-bye Apple.