Bali , Ubud, the green rice fields are endless, and cattle and sheep are walking in the fields, making a pleasant mooing sound. At the same time, there were constant sounds of keyboard typing, printer roar, and dialogues mixed with a large number of terms and languages in the open-air bar on the side of the country road. Remote workers of different skin colors sat in front of bamboo tables and chairs, accompanied by a cup of coffee and a plate of sandwiches, buried in front of their respective display screens, as if they were in a neat and orderly independent universe. This is a world of difference from the woven atmosphere of the Holy Monkey Forest a hundred meters away.
Hubud is Bali’s first co-working space, located in Ubud, famous for yoga, natural therapy, organic food and beauty. Photography Daniela Cabrerizo
This is Hubud, the most popular and experienced co-working space in Bali. Freelancers and remote workers can get software and hardware facilities that are no different from traditional office spaces at reasonable prices, and at the same time, they can also gain rustic countryside scenery, fresh air, beautiful travel experiences, and even additional bonuses such as language classes, workshops, skill sharing, creative incubation, and meeting business leaders.
In addition to Hubud, similarly positioned co-working spaces in Bali include Outpost, Lineup Hub, Dojo, Wave, Livit Spaces, Sanur Space, Kumpul, etc. Most of them provide a variety of services including office, accommodation, entertainment, and pan-education in weekly or monthly units. Looking around the world, there are many "remote work-friendly" destinations similar to Bali, and the situation is similar. Open the "Battler List" website (nomadlist.com), and we can easily find a series of city choices with touching internet speed, good air quality, low cost of living, safe and convenient. For example, Prague, Budapest , Chiang Mai, Taipei, Munich, Miami , Valencia , Warsaw... The content page of each city also lists various data and scores related to the size and details of the climate, work and living environment, and presents it to users in the form of a calendar. The
"Battler List" website is created by Peter Levos, a Dutch backpacker and coder, who created the
"Battler List" group that is targeted by a group of alternative travelers who rely on online office and work. Wikipedia defines this concept mainly including the following: 1. Use the Internet or mobile Internet to realize remote work. 2. Popularly use co-working spaces or cafes to work and share office equipment with others. 3. Have travel habits and have the ability to continue working during travel.
This is an unpopular concept, and the proposer of the concept cannot be verified. But now, with the development of Internet technology and the sharing economy, it has gradually evolved into an increasingly popular lifestyle and has affected more and more industries and practitioners. On the "Battler List" website, we can randomly select a city and take a look at the Hashtag Nomad community where registered users gather. We will inevitably be shocked by the popularity and the update speed of the topic. According to a 2015 Gallup poll, 37% of workers in the United States claim to be working remotely, compared with only 9% 10 years ago. In August 2015, Peter Levels, founder of the "Battler List" website, made a report for DNX Global, boldly predicted that by 2035, the number of "digital homeless people" around the world will exceed 1 billion.
Peter Levos, picture from wired.com. Photography Xiufen Silver
On the "Battler List" website, we can find a variety of travel, life and work experience sharing. From these vivid stories, it is not difficult to piece together colorful group portraits of remote workers from all over the world. Peter Levos himself is a good example. This Dutch guy, who was a programmer, once polished out 12 startups including the website while traveling around the world with a backpack for a year, so as to become the new godfather of the "digital novices" movement from an unknown coder and was regarded as a role model for countless travel entrepreneurs.
A San Francisco maker named Jay Meistrich shared his three-year full-time travel experience on the website, explaining the beneficial impact of "digital novices" on himself. He set out from the United States with a 40-liter backpack, traveled through 47 countries, lived an adventurer's life during the day and returned to work at night. In co-working spaces such as Kohub, , Bangkok, , and Hubud and Dojo in Bali, he exchanged experiences and shared skills with other digital novices, established lasting friendships with many entrepreneurs, and also received a lot of valuable suggestions on business development and brand marketing. At the end of the journey, he successfully completed his first startup.
For Jay Meschi, three years of full-time travel have almost broken and reshaped himself. For example, he developed exercise and healthy eating habits, mastered a series of working methods that could make him more efficient and productive, and became more open-minded and confident in his personality. The pleasure brought by exploring the world made him live freely and fulfilled every day. In addition, he also did some calculations. Along the way, the average cost of living is much lower than staying in his hometown in San Francisco. Jay Meschi said that during his three years of traveling full-time, he was more creative and productive than ever before, and spent less money than in San Francisco. Picture from entrepreneur.com
Compared with the travel entrepreneurial experience of various foreign masters, the domestic vagrant circle has not many legendary deeds for discussion because it started late. However, Li Jin and Ji Han, a young couple who drove through 25 Eurasia countries, refreshed their cognitions for many people who have not yet touched this emerging lifestyle.
Li Jin and Mr. embarked on a journey in late summer 2015. Before this, they were both employees of a well-known Internet company, and both of them worked for a long time as " slash Youth " (Slash, an emerging group with multiple careers and skills reserves). Li Jin worked as a book planning and editor for "Lonely Planet" in his spare time in his spare time, and his husband and his friends created his own quantitative finance company. After resigning, the two immediately switched to the mobile office mode. They traveled by themselves during the day and wrote codes, reviewed manuscripts, and processed emails in hotels or cafes at night. This rhythm continued until the end of the entire journey in the fall of 2016.
In Li Jin's opinion, their first attempt at nomadic life was not very successful. Due to the budget and length of the trip, the travel conditions were much more difficult than normal vacations, and their physical exhaustion was extremely large. In addition, self-driving travel, many ways to travel poorly or barren lands without network coverage, resulting in frequent hindering work progress. The couple are also considering whether they should do more moderate travel in the future, and go on a long journey once a month or two to maintain their dream of "all the world is home".
Li Jin (Luna) and their Chinese licensed MINI car "flying carpet". The two set off from Shanghai, entered Europe through Russia and Finland, and drove to the UK and Ireland . The journey was 58,000 kilometers and traveled to 25 countries and regions. The picture is provided by the interviewee
examples of Li Jin and his wife, which can basically represent the current development status of digital vagrants in China. This is a constantly integrated and iterative group that has a great overlap with the familiar SOHO, millennials, light asset generations, and slash youth, super individuals, backpackers, and interval travelers. Jarod (Zhang Le), the creator of the big V in the circle and the digital novices tribe (jarodise.com), believes that the life forms of many digital novices will move between several labels. Some used to be SOHO, and some belong to "slash youth", but recently many people have been transforming towards "digital novices". In the websites and WeChat accounts created and operated by Jarod, various urban rovers are also gathered, including coders, designers, self-media, e-commerce, makers, and a small number of "nomadic" capitalists...
Jarod's understanding of "digital rovers" is relatively mature. He mentioned that this is a lifestyle concept rather than a career concept. Another important point is that "digital rovers" does not exclude non-tourism enthusiasts and non-freelancers.In Jarod's view, there are only two criteria for judging whether a person is a "digital nomad", whether he relies entirely on the Internet to create income, and whether he can achieve unrestricted regional life through the Internet, which is the so-called location independence.
Use a chart to tell you that it is not only coders who can be "digital novices"
In an article interview with Levos in 2014, the American Wired magazine pointed out that Tim Ferris' best-selling book "The Four Hour Work Week" provides a practical methodology for those who have adapted to digital survival or are eager to get out of the nine-to-five office environment. With this as a starting point, people began to pack their work, go to every corner of the world, and turn gap years into a sustainable lifestyle.
"Working 4 hours a week" can be said to be a bowl of standard American chicken soup, but it is not ruled out that the book proposes several attractive concepts: for example, 1. Retire early and use material accumulation before the age of 60 to exchange for discretionary time after the age of 60, and the transaction is unpaid. 2. New Rich, measure enough money and enough discretionary time as personal wealth. 3. Living elsewhere, if your absolute income cannot be changed, then work in a place with a lower cost of living. 4. A person can work anywhere, and of course he can also work during travel. 5. Live a streamlined and efficient life.
Jarod himself is also one of the fans of Ferris' theory. His last job was to work as a petroleum engineer at a Fortune 500 foreign oil service company. During his career bottleneck period in 2009, he happened to read this book and was deeply inspired. Then he spent several years laying the groundwork and completing the transformation of his personal lifestyle. Now, Jarod is a self-media person and a pan-educator. He has accumulated several application development projects at the same time. He will take these homework to Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur , Bali, Da Nang, Prague, Budapest, Warsaw and other places, and work, live and travel at the rhythm he likes.
"Working 4 hours a week" is the lifestyle bible in the minds of many digital vagrants. The picture comes from efficientlifeskills
Liu Yi, who entered the digital vagrant circle two years ago, is a remote worker who is traveling outside in groups. He previously worked as a network engineer at Alibaba . After resigning, he joined Deep Development, an internet outsourcing company that claims to be "working only but not working", and began an intermittent nomadic life. Liu Yi and other members of the team come from different cities. The company organizes all employees to work together for one or two months every six weeks. In most cases, they gather in domestic cities such as Nanjing, Chengdu, Changsha, and Sanya, but there are also overseas cities such as Chiang Mai, Cebu, Kathmandu, Sydney, Melbourne, and even Hobart in Tasmania.
What impressed Liu Yi the most was the month spent in Chiang Mai with his colleagues. During this period, they lived in a villa booked by the company, writing codes as usual during the day, discussing product structures, wandering around in the evening and weekends, experiencing street food in northern Thailand, making coffee shops and searching for historical sites. For him, this kind of life is a conditioner for the boring daily life - because most "apes" have too much schedule, it is easy to feel like they staying at home all day, and under the basic framework of nomadic life, they will be more likely to accept a positive and healthy lifestyle.
Living in cities with low food and board costs is also one of the potential benefits of "digital vagrants". Take Chiang Mai as an example. After deducting the company's accommodation and air ticket costs, Liu Yi and his colleagues actually spend only one or two thousand yuan per month, which is even more costly than when they were working in Hangzhou and Suzhou. He also mentioned that the ISO programmers in the team have been reluctant to come back since they went to Dali last year. "The price of renting a house there is 100 yuan a day during the peak season, and only a few dozen yuan a day during the off-season."
Respondents and team members "working vacation" in Chiang Mai for one month. The picture comes from Deep Development
In foreign countries, the more common "working vacation" is to join a joint work space targeting digital homeless people, or join a travel plan that "jumps" between cities around the world. In fact, many such projects have developed very maturely. In addition to taking into account the needs of remote workers for office hardware, fixed items such as fitness, travel, socialization, skill sharing and charging are also placed in the service menu.
For example, Remote Year, founded in 2014, is the originator of the "digital novices" travel products, providing a large-scale plan to unlock a brand new city every year. Participants need to pay a deposit of USD 5,000 in advance, and thereafter, they will pay USD 2,000 per month to cover various expenses such as transportation, accommodation, travel insurance, and team activities in different cities. The characteristic of Remote Year is that it considers the quality, skills, personality, gender and the degree of harmony of the participants. The maximum number of participants in each project is set to 75. Due to the large number of applicants, the company is not allowed to pass a simple interview with applicants.
According to founder Greg Caplan, a team of 75 people is not big or small, which is easy to cultivate a sense of community and can also make different projects continuity. "Although most people think that where the homeless people work is not a problem, in fact, many people need to accommodate New York time or London time to work, which makes them choose their destination with a more demanding perspective, and may not be able to follow the team they originally joined to the end."
Roam is located in the shared work and living space of Chelsea, London. The picture comes from roam.co
Compared with Remote Year, Roam is more suitable for remote workers who are just starting their careers and pursuing cost-effectiveness in accommodation. What’s interesting about Roam is that it is a shared work and life platform founded with the concept of “new minimalism”. It allows applicants to rent private suites at different city sites for $500 a week, and share with others a full range of co-working spaces, meeting rooms, laundry rooms, kitchens, bars, pools, media rooms and libraries with others during their stay. In addition, with the help of local collaborators, Roam also provides residents with rich theme workshops, language classes and tourist tours, with the purpose of creating a friendly, united and stable community relationship.
Bruno Haid, co-founder of the platform, believes that the concept of "home" has changed drastically in the 21st century today - people may have thought that home is the best place a person can afford. Although he has to pay a 30-year mortgage, today, home is the scenery, experience, and life itself.
Currently, the five urban sites opened by Roam have completed their own renovation based on hotels and large apartments. The layout and design are different from other joint workspaces that people recognize. Here, a person can find all the items needed except his carry-on luggage, including conversion plugs, video conferencing facilities, audio and video equipment. Another strange phenomenon is that there is no desk in the living room of each private suite and no closet in the bedroom. It is said that the purpose of this arrangement is to allow occupants to step out of the private space as much as possible and have a better community experience.
Roam participants experience cooking courses after work. The pictures are from roam.co
. Homogeneous travel projects include The Remote Experience, We Roam, Hacker Paradise, etc., and the fees are basically floating around US$2,000 per month. In previous conversations, Jarod once said with a little regret that such projects had too high prices. According to the actual cost he has gone through, the living expenses of the same destination can be reduced by more than half, but the various supporting facilities and thoughtful services provided by professional companies are missing.
For many homeless people who have standard Silicon Valley wages, or who are consciously lacking travel experience and are easily knocked out by the "insecurity" of leaving the group, joining a commercial but reliable travel project is also a shortcut.Looking at the benefits, maybe it can also gain several future business partners, or teachers who can give guidance on development development. Of course, the premise is that in addition to paying a little more than the domestic living cost, you also need to have plenty of time to prepare a multi-country visa.
Global Remote Co-working Space Menu
1.Remote Year
City menu: Prague, Budapest, Split, Lisbon, Valencia, Sofia, Belgrade , Marrakech, Kyoto, Bangkok, Hanoi, Phnom Penh, Mexico City , Medellin , Bogota , Buenos Aires , Cordoba, Lima, etc.
Fee: $5,000 deposit, $2,000 per month; including air tickets, hotel or apartment accommodation, shared office space between city sites Room and facilities, travel insurance and team activities
www.remoteyear.com
2.Roam
City menu: London, Tokyo, Madrid, Miami, Bali, Los Angeles
Fee: USD 500 per week or USD 1800 per month; including private suites, shared office spaces, offices, living, entertainment facilities, sightseeing projects and workshops
www.roam.co
3.The Remote Experience
City menu: Barcelona , Valencia, Porto, Turin, Berlin, Prague, Split, Florianopolis, Medellin, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Chiang Mai, Bali
Cost: USD 1900 to USD 2000 per month; Apartments and villas with separate dormitories or shared living rooms for four people, shared office spaces and facilities, medical insurance, sightseeing guides, etc.
www.theremote experience.com
The Remote Experience itinerary thumbnail, picture from theremoteexperience.com
4. We Roam
City menu: Vancouver, Montreal , New York, San Diego, Austin , Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, kotor, Belgrade, Lisbon, Rabat , Kuala Lumpur, Chiang Mai, Sydney and other
Cost: $15,000 for half a year, or $27,000 for a year; including transportation fees at all destinations, independent dormitories, shared office spaces, workshops, online and offline community activities
www.we-roam.com
5. Remote Way
City menu: San Jose, Castro, Iguazu, Bariloche, Marrakech, Lisbon, Valencia, Split, Rabat, Dubrovnik , Hanoi, Halong Bay, Koh Samui , Phuket , etc.
Fee: USD 3,000 per month (two-month to three-month travel plan), or USD 2,000 per month (eight-month travel plan), couples sign up for an additional 25% discount; the fee has included transportation, accommodation, shared work space, entertainment and educational activities, and different types of activity options are available at different destinations, such as surfing, coffee plantation hiking, language courses, etc.
www.theremoteway.com
6.Hacker Paradise
City menu: Tokyo, Taipei, Barcelona, Palermo, Costa Rica, Buenos Aires, Lima, Bali, etc.
Fee: USD 745 per week (2-week travel plan), or USD 495 (4-8-week travel plan), and you can enjoy discounts when booking for more than 3 months; the fees include accommodation, shared office space, social activities, etc.
hackerparadise.org
(Thanks to Jarod Zhang Le for the help for this interview)
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