I’m Cherie Ve Ard, and my partner Chris Dunphy and I are full-time digital nomads, though we prefer to call ourselves “technomads” - a word coined by our friend (the original technomad) Steve Roberts. Together with our kitten Kiki, we make up Technomadia.
We roam around the country in our small solar-powered travel trailer geeked out just for us. Neither of us has a physical “home base” anywhere else, and we truly are out there living a mobile digital lifestyle full-time. We run a small consulting business as we go, and when we take on projects we have found that physical location is growing less relevant in an age of increasingly ubiquitous connectivity. Often we work remotely (sometimes very!), and other times we take advantage of our nomadic flexibility to be on-site for a client for an extended period of time.
Our nomadic lifestyle allows us to be ‘home’ wherever we are - even when attending festivals and events. One event we regularly attend, and a place we consider a home in our hearts year round, is Burning Man.
What is Burning Man?
Not unlike the Grand Canyon, Burning Man is something that can’t adequately be described with words or pictures - you really need to experience it to understand it. The basics, however, are rather simple - nearly 50,000 people come together in the the remote and desolate Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada during the week before Labor Day every year to build a temporary city dedicated to “community, art, self-expression and self reliance”. 
There is no vending, no food stalls, no t-shirts, no main stage, no “official” agenda, and no corporate sponsorships of any kind allowed. The only city infrastructure provided are porta-potties, ice sales, and a Center Camp cafe that sells lemonade and lattes. There aren’t even any trash cans - every participant is responsible for carrying out not only their own trash, but any other trash they find, making Burning Man the largest “leave no trace” event in the world.
There is however amazing art, music, fire (lots of fire!), food, architecture, technology, and even an airport to be found. All of it is created by other attendees, and offered to each other via a “gift economy” where even bartering is frowned upon.
Burning Man operates on a “no spectators” philosophy - and there is intentionally no distinction made between audience and performers. Everyone attending Burning Man is encouraged to find some way to actively participate, whether this looks like working as a volunteer for the city itself or helping on one of the many giant architectural projects, or doing other things - such as gifting handmade jewelry, giving a fire dance performance, hosting a BBQ feast for your neighbors, playing live music, offering aerial tours, showing off autonomous swarming networked robots, giving rides on a magic carpet, creating a roller disco, offering math tutoring (seriously!), giving dance lessons, or even just offering cold icee pops to passers-by on a hot day.
No one is being paid to perform. Whether you stumble across a world-renowned DJ spinning, a famous artist painting, or a full-on circus (complete with big top tent) performing a high-wire show, you will marvel realizing that every one of them came through the front gate having purchased the same tickets that you did.
The physical centerpiece of the city is a giant wooden man that is burned on Saturday night, but with so much other stuff going on all week long the “Burning Man” itself is hardly the focus of the event any more.
Camp Nomadia
One of the things we crave as we travel is a deeper connection with community. Our travel allows us to connect with people all over the place, but we find a certain special connection with other folks who are also called to a nomadic lifestyle and who are out traveling the world.
To help bring together other nomads, last year we we founded a new theme camp at Burning Man - Camp Nomadia. It’s a camp specifically for nomadic souls to come together and converge to create a temporary home for us all.
Last year was a great success, and we enjoyed camping with other nomads as well as hosting several nomadic happy hours to bring together other nomads camped elsewhere in Black Rock City. Over the course of the week, a wide range of amazing folks came together to connect, swap stories, and share experiences.
We are planning to host Camp Nomadia again this year at Burning Man, and we’d like to extend a special invitation to all digital nomads out there to join us.
As nomads tend to be used to being very self-sufficient and independent, Camp Nomadia has intentions of being a very chill no-frills camp. We will have no central group infrastructure, except perhaps a shade structure. This means each nomad is responsible for all his own needs - food, water, cooking, clean-up, shelter, shower, power, greywater handling, etc. But unlike many other more infrastructure-heavy camps, we also have no camp fees.
Camp Nomadia is open to current nomads, digital nomads, future nomads, wanna-be nomads, part time nomads, domestic nomads, international nomads, technomads, low-technomads, former nomads, RV nomads, couch-surfing nomads, land nomads, rail nomads, backpacking nomads, sailing nomads, or folks who just want to be around nomads (yes, your non-nomadic friends can join too!). We welcome Burning Man veterans and virgins alike.
For more details, go here
If you are considering coming Burning Man this year, we would love to have you join us in creating Camp Nomadia. And if you are going to be camped elsewhere, be sure to stop by and say hello at one of our Nomadic Happy Hours!
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[...] Location: St. Louis, Missouri Web: Tales from Technomadia Bio: “We are technomads (technology based nomads) - mid 30s couple (@serolynne + @radven) plus kitten (@kikinator) traveling the US in a solar 17′ geeky trailer.” Cool Upcoming Project: Nomads at Burning Man Have a Place to Call Their Own [...]
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Nomad Contributors
by Technomadia / August 17, 2009
Just an update for anyone interested in stopping by Camp Nomadia at Burning Man..
We have been invited to share space with Pandora’s Fix-it Shoppe at 6:00 & DNA.
Stop on by for our Nomadic Happy Hours in their lounge (Tue & Thur, 4-6p), or come by Thur @ 3pm for a workshop on how to become technomadic!
See you on the playa!