Biting the bullet...

[rz6bm7]

Not sure a Clio with a baby seat will meet the clients requirements!

[Le Rosbif]

Maybe try and follow the footsteps of this briton who runs a very successful contract business in South East France.

[rz6bm7]

I haven't seen it thanks, though the battle here is my skillset (and poor french!) Windows infrastructure projects don't really happen here and Prince is none existent & given the 'slow' market there has been nothing really for me , .NET comes up a lot but I don't think it's worth the effort of the training given the life left in the skill, J2EE is but to change into OO development is possible but a giant step where as LAMP seems to meet me half way and might help me and give me a broad function skill base - just don't know if the training is viable.

[Le Rosbif]

I'm just outside Cannes, there is a large international commercial park nearby (Sophia Antipolis) with most of the big Blue chips and Monaco not far down the road,
I know most of the local agencies fairly well and use Monster and the french employment service http://www.pole-emploi.fr/accueil/
Amongst others, though still look in the UK for work but it;s not quite the market it once was!.

Sophia Antipolis - I thought so.
I've been thinking to go back to France and contract there for a while.
But it seems that contracts are only really available in Paris or Cannes (Sophia).
There's literally nothing happening in the west/south west.
Have you tried getting in touch with consultancies (SSII)? They hold most of the IT Market in France and might be keen to let you subcontract through them in order to fill specific gaps, urgent requirements?

Edit:

you probably know this website, but here it is still:
http://www.lesjeudis.com/

[rz6bm7]

I'm just outside Cannes, there is a large international commercial park nearby (Sophia Antipolis) with most of the big Blue chips and Monaco not far down the road,
I know most of the local agencies fairly well and use Monster and the french employment service http://www.pole-emploi.fr/accueil/
Amongst others, though still look in the UK for work but it;s not quite the market it once was!.

[Le Rosbif]

Ok I have been contracting for the last 10 years - large infrastructure implementations, I have been benched for most of the last year the rates for my old MCSE & Prince 2 aren't what they were technically or in PMO roles so I am guessing it's time to flog this dying horse and train a little and maybe (it pains me) go hands on in a permie role to get upto scratch; I'm in the south of france and the market is almost all UNIX LAMP, C#.NET and JAVA
I don't think I have the time to be functional OO developer or the experience to manage a development project so this sort of points me at LAMP, I am interested on how viable people think it is to become functional with these skills in a bootcamp given I already have function knowledge of UNIX on large networks and have good scripting skills (mainly DOS and VBS/VBA but functional)
with the end game of probably doing a RHCE cert and a bootcamp in a popular bootcamp in India - is it viable in six weeks to have enough skill to understand an existing environment and work with in it - EG get some work afterwards (in the assumption there are really jobs out there somewhere)
or is this a dead horse that shouldn't be flogged???

Where exactly in France are you located?
How are you hunting for contracts?
Is there a website similar to jobserve for the contract market in France?

[rz6bm7]

Ok I have been contracting for the last 10 years - large infrastructure implementations, I have been benched for most of the last year the rates for my old MCSE & Prince 2 aren't what they were technically or in PMO roles so I am guessing it's time to flog this dying horse and train a little and maybe (it pains me) go hands on in a permie role to get upto scratch; I'm in the south of france and the market is almost all UNIX LAMP, C#.NET and JAVA
I don't think I have the time to be functional OO developer or the experience to manage a development project so this sort of points me at LAMP, I am interested on how viable people think it is to become functional with these skills in a bootcamp given I already have function knowledge of UNIX on large networks and have good scripting skills (mainly DOS and VBS/VBA but functional)
with the end game of probably doing a RHCE cert and a bootcamp in a popular bootcamp in India - is it viable in six weeks to have enough skill to understand an existing environment and work with in it - EG get some work afterwards (in the assumption there are really jobs out there somewhere)
or is this a dead horse that shouldn't be flogged???