Confirmed Internet junkie, blogger, and marketer pursuing the digital nomad lifestyle. Oh, and I LOVE a good debate, Shiner, and my Bride!

Much to my surprise, when I looked to that pervasive compendium of human knowledge that is Wikipedia,  I discovered that… well, let’s just say I think I’ve found something it doesn’t know! (I’ll fix that right after I finish this post!)

So I set off on a quest. Surely someone somewhere has undertaken the arduous task of defining this thing we seek…right? I did manage to find DigitalNomads.com, a site dedicated to the lifestyle… awesome find, but still no concrete definition. So I did what any good social media practitioner would do, I tried a little crowdsourcing and put out a Tweet.

“The world is a digital nomad’s office.”

Mitch Cantor, StudioNashVegas.com

For me, a digital nomad is one that is not tethered to a certain spot by technology but is rather emancipated by it. In one of my past entries, Repent! Repent! The End of the Personal Computer is Near! I looked at how technology used to relegate us to that designated corner of the living room, the spare bedroom, or in my case the laundry room at one point. Now however, we are freed as connectedness in incorporated into sorts of cool devices including Tivo, my phone, and just about every other device in the house. This new found freedom breaks the bonds of the PC in the corner, but is that all there is?

Being a digital nomad is more that just extending your connected existence. Sure I can write a blog post at home or the coffee shop, or on the bus, but do I have access to the same resources in those places? Are all my files, pictures and drafts available everywhere work might find me? Answering THAT question is the definition of the digital nomad lifestyle for me. I guess the simplest way to say it is,

“I don’t sit in one spot to work, I work where I sit. “

Well, I don’t WANT to sit in one spot to work… like my bio says, I’m pursuing the digital nomad lifestyle, haven’t quite achieved it yet… but there’s hope!

So how do you achieve that level of freedom? Well there are many fine articles across the expanse of the Internet giving all sorts of great advice on how to do just that, many of them on my new found resource, DigitalNomad.com. It most likely boils down to what works for you and what you need to do. I’ve been very diligent over the past two years to move everything I do into the cloud. With my digital existence in the cloud, accessing the requisite data and tools becomes easy from where ever I happen to be. Granted, this hasn’t been easy and it has been necessary to write a few of my own tools, but its coming along.

A few of the key tools and services that are helping get me there include GMail, Google Docs, Google Apps, Zoho Apps (see, I’m not TOTALLY sold out to Google…yet), and Dropbox. And of course, we cannot leave out WordPress! There are a few stragglers including a good online development environment and some hobby specific things.

So for the most part, where ever I happen to be, what ever laptop I happen to have… as long as I can access the Internet (yeah, I know… comment it!) I can get work done. I work where I sit… and that is a digital nomad.

@jtrigsby

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Confirmed Internet junkie, blogger, and marketer pursuing the digital nomad lifestyle. Oh, and I LOVE a good debate, Shiner, and my Bride!

Enjoy,

 @jtrigsby

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