Adventures in Digital Nomadism First talk on Saturday… do something to get everyone awake?

John Allison @jrallison I’m a digital nomad Great to be back in my hometown talking to you all

January 1st, 2014 http://www.gothereguide.com/tower-bridge+london-place/ Took a one-way flight to London. Gave up my Manhattan apt, technically homeless, I guess. Must spend 330/365 days of 2014 outside of the US. Didn’t know if I’d still enjoy it by the end, but I love it, so now will likely extend to all of 2015. I made it as far as Turkey in the first leg before hoping back to the states for a few weeks.

Problem “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” - Lao Tzu First impression… redeye flight, detained in customs for 4 hours. Embraced this quote a bit too much. London didn’t agree with me, or Lao Tzu [lou-dzuh]. Aside: may be better not to do what I did

London made it through finally and visited london spent a week in a new area every week. foursquare checkins: chart is colored from green to red based on date of visit.

Sunday at the Pub watching fütbol with british rubbish!

January 1st - July 4th Jan 1st - July 4th. Color coded from green to red based on time.

Goals

“Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” – Paul Theroux 1) Work on my company every day. 2) Don’t make plans more than a few weeks ahead of time. 3) Ensure I have a place to sleep and internet access. (Redundant internets perf.)

“The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.” – G.K. Chesterton 4) Spend a considerable amount of time in each place (1 month+). 5) Live/work in residential/local areas (airbnb.com rather than hotels) 6) Favor local favorites over tourist attractions.

8 months ! 9 countries ! UK France Switzerland Germany Spain Romania Bulgaria Turkey NYC Florida Canada Arkansas Mexico Peru ? Chile ? Argentina ? Brazil ? ! ! should be 13 for all of 2014 Asia/Australia/Africa in 2015?

Nomad’s best friend Everything I own. Donated 95% of my belongings (not that much, twas a NYC apartment) RULE: not used once a week, it gets thrown out. Exception: broken camera =/ Only really miss my cast-iron skillet. Cooking on the road is hard, so mostly eat out. Something very freeing about being able to put everything you own on your back in ~15 min.

Savings lots of people ask if I had to save up forever. sustainable because I’m working. Actually cheaper than living in NYC

Arriving Quickly noticed a pattern. Few things I do when landing in a new country: 1) local sim card 2) cash in local currency 3) figure out where I am, where I’m going, and how I get to there 4) find a place to work 5) start learning about the area

Berlin best place so far that I could see myself living for awhile. cheap/artsy/hipster/techy

met dude and rented his apartment for the whole time. That’s why I mostly stayed in Mitte. meeting and talking with people not much older, who remember the wall falling progression of friends, activity from week 1 - 4

Romania

Bucharest Cheapest, most technically advanced place. Right on the internet backbone. Talented people. Brain drain to tech centers, as not much opportunity in Romania.

Black Sea

Worked down the black sea coast traveling from romania to istanbul

Turkey Pammukke

Istanbul most unique culture of the places I’ve visited so far. Historic. Istanbul, First stop in Asia. Ferry commutes from the asian side.

Sultan palace.

Spent a week down in south east turkey

Ephesus, my turkish leather shoes It seems like everywhere I went, was just further back in time.

Fell in love with traveling by train in east europe/turkey a) cheap b) beautiful c) comfy d) quiet time for work Mostly flew through west europe, was cheaper. When I go back to the spots I miss, I’ll train.

wait… so… how? Lot of people ask me this. Say their jealous. Everyone has their excuses.

“The trouble is, you think you have time.” ! - The Buddha I’m a workaholic. Doesn’t matter. If you want to travel, find a way to do it now. Many people I talk to say it’s something they want to do, but haven’t yet. Why?

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain from my ferry commute when I was living in asia and working in europe.

Let’s back it up

I’m a programmer Programmer I’m a programmer… probably a minority here.

Arkansan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Arkansas Grew up in Little Rock, spent some time in Fayetteville, Hog fan… woo pig

New Yorker http://www.newyorkbyrail.com/New-York-City-Overview/ Move to NYC 6 years ago

Email your customers based on what they do (or don’t do) in your app Started Customer.io 2.5 years ago in NY

e Last Nov, everyone was in NYC, started testing out whether remote would work for us. Now we’re in 6 cities.

http://customer.io/blog/Revenue-growth-20x-in-2013.html Transparency Open about our company. Continued since Dec 2013. Crossed a million in ARR in July.

We live in an amazing time. http://astrobob.areavoices.com/tag/space-shuttle/ Rosetta comet intercept??? first time in history, it’s possible to completely disconnect your physical location from your job/career/salary potential. Possible for anyone who’s main output is digital. You have access to the world market from your living room.

1985 http://life.almostfearless.com/a-brief-history-of-digital-nomading/

1995 20-30 million internet users

1999 Paypal launches Cheaper laptops with wifi “Changing the way the world works” http://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/29/technology/a- home-page-away-from-home.html?src=pm “A Home Page Away From Home”

2000 360 million internet users 5 years went from 20-30 to 360

2003 Adsense placed revenue into hands of bloggers Skype: overseas phone calls over the internet

2007 US Gov starts pushing for employees to work-from-home for cost savings. “location independent” - Lea Woodward Almost no digital nomads claim to work only four hours a week.

2012 2.4 billion internet users 140k US Gov employees are able to work remote 40% of US jobs could feasibly be done remotely

2013 The “online staffing industry” is estimated to increase from: ! $1 Billion in 2012 to $5 Billion in 2018 online staffing industry = freelancers working online

https://signalvnoise.com/ http://groovehq.com/blog http://open.bufferapp.com/ https://zapier.com/blog/ Remote work becoming more common Many companies championing it and openly blogging about it Not outsourcing

face-to-face Communication options are mature. Google Hangouts, embracing asynchronous communication, team chat…. slack! Remember awful teleconference crap from early on in my career.

Embrace the differences https://www.embracingourdifferences.org/art.html Not better or worse than traditional office environment, just different. Don’t have to travel to be remote… differences apply to anyone working out of office Either your team rallies to each other’s side or they don’t. Physical office or not.

CoWorking http://juergenalker.com/post/58773460191/berlin-start-up-hub-st-oberholz …. if you are concerned with isolation, or don’t want to work in your pjs everyday. Did this in just about every country. Also a great way to meet likeminded people.

All or None one member of your team remote, while everyone else in a physical office is recipe for hardship.

http://www.redcandy.co.uk/product-newgate-lambeth-timezone-wall-clock.php Time zones matter, especially when working closely with others. when working closely with others, find a way to have a period of time when you’re both online. 4 hours is a good benchmark.
 Adjusted my time from working late at night in the US to working in the morning. Next year in Asia, ask me how this goes…

Speak up Take initiative All of our successful hires manage themselves. No one really knows what you’re up too unless you say so. Micromanaging someone remotely is almost impossible. Trust is important, we need to be able to trust someone to take an idea and run with it.

Execution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_locomotive Built for execution. In periods of imagination/brainstorming, you can’t beat a physical room with a whiteboard. Find ways to get together in one place when necessary.

Retreat Maintaining a shared vision/team culture is harder remote. Retreats are a great way to re-align. Great time for imaginative thinking/brainstorming, as getting familiar with everyone on the team. Nothing beats face-to-face time.

Keep the casual http://www.chrisakins.com/the-lost-art-of-casual-conversation/ Started Customer.io with Colin. In an office, it was easy to solve company problems and make decisions together. That stopped happening for the first 3 months we were remote. Until we met at the retreat and realized there was a problem.

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” - Benjamin Franklin Copyright HBO or something You can’t escape the IRS anywhere on earth. But, no US income tax on first $95k + $25-30k in income if you quality. Few options, I chose the physical absence test. If you don’t stay long enough to be a resident anywhere… no taxes.

http://gladyskravitz.blogspot.com/2012/01/uneven-playing-field.html Even with all this globalization, there’s a wide disparity between the same job in different places. People are talented everywhere, but some are paid much more simply because where they live. This leads to thinking they must leave to move forward in their careers. Historically right, but it’s slowly changing. This will likely even out somewhat over time, as remote work becomes more and more prevalent, and internet age skills continue to increase in demand. However, likely will never completely go away (language barriers, human nature to place more trust in those we know personally).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Marble It’s only unequal if you accept it. The world is your oyster. Take it. Whether you’re travel, or work in Arkansas, there’s nothing stopping you from taking advantage of all the worlds opportunities. Hurdles are mainly human. I personally felt inferior when trying to find work on in SF/NYC for the first time. Realizing you’re as talented as anyone else, and finding ways to earn trust in the center of your industry, the sky’s the limit, no matter where you live.

“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list” ! - Susan Sontag Every place I visit, the more I realize there are so many more places to go. See ya out there!