Contact
Most people arrive holding one question. There are two ways to hand it over, and an address for everything else.
Each form reaches the student who would do the work. Neither asks for a CV, a deck or an introduction, and neither costs anything to send.
The two routes
Two forms, one for each way a question tends to arrive.
They ask different things because the two groups are holding different things. Take whichever one describes yours. If neither does, the address is further down the page.
A market question
A founder with a decision waiting on a number.
The research is free. If it is not a question this desk can do well, you hear that in the reply and not after a call.
If it goes ahead, twenty minutes on a call to pin the decision down, then four or five researchers working out of a company register, customs entries and the phone. Every source in what comes back carries an A, a B or a C.
A place on the desk
Williams students, first and second years especially.
There is no CV at this stage. The form asks how you would reach a number nobody has published, and that answer is the part that gets read first.
What the work asks for is somebody who keeps going after the published sources run out, which is a habit rather than a background.
Replies
No reply time is published on this site.
Nobody has counted one, and a figure nobody has counted does not go up here. These four are true without counting anything.
- Who reads it
- A student on the desk. The reply comes back from that student rather than from a general account.
- What a reply says
- Either what a first call would cover, or which part of the question this desk could not do well, and why. A no arrives in the reply, not after a call. You hear back either way, including on the questions it turns down.
- When
- The work runs on a college calendar, so a message sent in the middle of reading period waits for the end of it.
- If nothing comes back
- Send it again, or write to the address below and say which form you sent and when.
Everything else
One address for everyone who fits none of the three.
Say in the first line what you are trying to find out. It saves a round trip, and it is the route for anyone who would rather write a sentence than fill in a form.
- Ubuntu Advisory Group. It is the only social channel the desk keeps.
- Where the desk works
- Williamstown, Massachusetts. There is no office to visit and no walk-in hours, so every conversation starts on a call.
- What you send
- No analytics script runs on this site, so a form and an email are the only things here that collect anything about you.
What the site collects, and how to check that in your own browser
Before you write
Send the decision, not the finished question.
If you cannot phrase it yet, write down what you are deciding and what would change your mind. The phrasing is what the twenty minutes are for.