Arguably, one of the greatest benefits for a digital nomad is the sheer mobility of the work style and the freedom one exercises on a daily basis. As a freelance designer, I am consistently the envy of friends who imagine how great it must be to lounge around the house in pajamas while working.
However, what my cube-dwelling friends may not realize is that to me and other mobile workers, this flexibility can actually also be a big disadvantage. While independent workers are free from birthday Fridays plucked straight from a Steve Carell sitcom, there is a noticeable decline in social interaction when your working environment is not the same four walls, forty hours a week.
The recent proliferation of mobile tools (e.g.: cellular phones, ultra-portable notebooks, wi-fi hotspots, etc.) have given freelancers, writers, telecommuters and tech entrepreneurs the ability to jump around from home offices to coffee shops to airports and hotels as alternative work environments. It turns out that e-mail and instant messages can’t substitute for human interaction as people long for face-to-face interactions well after the chat windows are closed.
Over the past few years, this heightened “digital” connectivity has created the need for something to help bring more social, “real world” interaction to these independent nomadic workers - a mechanism to allow them to continue to work solo, but to provide the means for connecting with individuals of similar backgrounds and working conditions.
Defined as “café-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents,” “coworking” has emerged as a solution to counteract this major problem. The main goal of coworking is to create an environment where nomadic workers can work alone…together. The past two years has seen a huge upswing in the international coworking trend and has led to the creation of several movements that you can easily choose to be a part of as a nomadic worker.
Jelly Casual Coworking - In February 2006, New York City roommates Amit Gupta and Luke Crawford invited friends to work out of their living room after missing the social aspect of an office. Word quickly spread about the meetings the duo eventually dubbed Jelly.
Now, coworkers - the term given to anyone participating in the coworking movement - meet up in over 20 cities, with more and more Jellies popping up all over the globe. By designating a time, a location and a shared purpose for coming together, Jelly provides a social platform for interactions to occur in places like coffee shops and living rooms, places where interactivity might otherwise be stonewalled by social norms.
For more information, check out the Jelly info page and the Jelly wiki for the list of cities where Jellies are held.
Coworking Spaces - While business incubators and executive suites are targeted towards startups and freelancers, “coworking spaces” have emerged as one alternative. These environments tend to be more professional than cafés and are great surroundings when you find yourself changing out of your PJs into some “real” clothes for client meetings.
The main difference between executive suites and coworking spaces is the focus on the community of workers that comprise the space. Internet access can be gained anywhere after all, it’s the people lonesome digital nomads are longing for.
Amenities vary from space to space, but you can bet you will find all the normal offerings you would need from a conventional office like conference rooms, whiteboards, fax and copy machines, and wi-fi access. If burning the midnight oil is when you find yourself working, some offices even offer 24-hour access - long past closing time at your neighborhood café. Look for drop-in rates if you want to try a space on for size or happen to be traveling for business; some spaces give free access to drop-ins!
Read the extensive coworking wiki for a list of locations around the world. If there’s no space where you base, then join the conversations in the Coworking Google Group to get the scoop on starting your own. The communities within the existing spaces are always willing to lend a hand and spread the word about coworking.
Mobile tools empower us with an amazing amount of freedom to do our work from wherever we choose. Yet with this heightened level of freedom, isolation was almost an inevitable byproduct. While virtual connections provided the means to get work done, they turned out to not provide the same quality of interaction as face-to-face.
But coworking is just one answer to fulfilling this need. As mobility and telecommuting gain popularity, it will be interesting to see what other innovations come out of growing problems with working virtually. Let me know what you think.
Cesar Torres is a freelance designer and co-founder of Conjunctured, the first coworking space in Austin.
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Comments (10)
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[...] Digital Nomads - Working Alone Sucks. Stop it! I only spend around 20-30% of my time working from home but can still sympathise with the sense of social alienation it would lead to if I did it much more. This article contains links to co-working initiatives for digital nomads who miss the social interactions of an office. I can see myself getting involved in such schemes if my working situation were to change and I was spending more time at home - my kitchen could serve as a comfortable office for three or four people, I reckon (tags: productivity coworking) [...]
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[...] there is the new co-working movement. Unfortunately, there is no space, as yet, in Washington [...]
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[...] in the Austin American Statesman, two writeups on the Mashable frontpage, I made some guest posts on Dell’s Digital Nomads blog and the Austin360 tech blog and we landed spots on KXAN News and NBC Nightly News as a result [...]
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[...] in the Austin American Statesman, two writeups on the Mashable frontpage, I made some guest posts on Dell’s Digital Nomads blog and the Austin360 tech blog and we landed spots on KXAN News and NBC Nightly News as a result [...]
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Nomad Contributors
by elizabeth / September 11, 2008
I am a digital nomad management consultant and I also live alone - the potential for social isolationism squared. I have to purposely schedule lunches, etc to make sure I don’t fall into a trap of never getting out of the house unless I am traveling. Besides the pure social piece, I found that when I was in an office with coworkers, we had a tendency to share ideas, processes, software, etc. Now, I have to look for these experiences on my own. Thanks for the information on Jelly - I will check it out.
by Doug P. / October 17, 2008
I have been working in the SW QA Test and Automation arena for years now, sometimes as a direct employee and other times as a Contractor\Consultant. What I have found is that I am longing to be a stay-at-home professional. I feel that I can accomplish more, and be more efficient with my time as compared to traveling back and forth to work each day as well as dealing with multiple “office chit-chat” distractions. Plus my restroom is much closer of a walk then I find at must companies. I feel that in today economy where companies are pulling back on spending I could offer a substantial savings to a company if I was allowed to do my job from my ‘home office’. I agree that working within a team everyday can foster ideas, processes or other things that interactions assist with, but I also think a phone call, IM, or email can aide in that space just as much. In most cases when a person is working from home they are usually connected into their office network and\or email software as well, so staying connected to ‘co-workers’ is just as easy…without the detractions of all the possible cubical stuff going on around you. Finally, I find this thread interesting, but I am someone who would love to work for a company that would allow me to work from home and be required to travel into an office (where ever it may be) monthly. If you are a company seeking someone to work remotely please drop me a line!
by Doug P. / October 17, 2008
my contact info didn’t make it thru….here it is.
DP.QUALITY@YAHOO.COM
by David / October 29, 2008
Like Doug I’ve been in SW QA for many years. I’ve had the opportunity to work from home occasionally and find there are plenty of distractions at home, they’re just different ones than you have in an office. More often than not something significant happens on the days when I’m at home even if 5 days in a row at the office yield nothing of real value. Even if I could guarantee great communication with everyone while I’m at home, I learn a lot from overhearing the developers and it would impact my ability to supervise my QA team. Like the original author I would feel isolated if I didn’t have regular face to face time with my co-workers. A developer friend of mine was working for a company in another city and got to the point where he felt so isolated that he decided to quit and look for work closer to home.
by Yuen-Lin / November 24, 2008
I work at a company, VSee, that makes a light-weight desktop collaboration tool optimized for remote work. My colleagues and I VSee each other on average a couple times each day to talk about things, attend meetings, debug issues. Before this, I was at a big company where people worked on-site. Nowadays, while I primarily work at home, I seldom feel lonely or disconnected. I think the team has developed a culture around the tool which quite nicely balances the benefits of working remotely with the benefits of being a touch away from people.
by Graeme Thickins / November 25, 2008
I’ve worked at home for more than 25 years as a writer and advisor/marketing consultant to technology startups. Over that time, tools for collaborating with far-flung colleagues have improved greatly (understatement).
Today, we have very easy-to-use, highly productive online tools — low-cost, subscription-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps — that are an enormous improvement over anything that’s come before. [Insert survey question: please raise your hand if you *don't* believe that email is dead as a team collaboration tool!]
The app I use and really find valuable is the OnePlace™ team collaboration and work management system (more here: http://info.oneplacehome.com ..and at http://www.twitter.com/oneplace ). Okay, they’re a client — but I’d still use it, anyway.
cheers,
Graeme
http://www.twitter.com/graemethickins