Arjen Strijker

Nomadworking: buckle-up for a new breed claiming their place in the global workforce

Post By Arjen ~ 14th June 2011

This post gives some insight in what Nomadworking is and how I manage myself as being a “nomadworker”. I’m typing this on my Mac 10km up in the sky somewhere between Zurich and Helsinki (peeking outside almost continuously in the hope I see that flying house they rebuild for real, based on the pixar movie Up ).

Who are we?

There’s a new breed of workers I consider myself part of. We live and travel all over the place; We are not bound to live where our clients, colleagues, and friends live. We do meet them regularly though – virtually and physically. We hang out in shared office spaces, cafes, parks, restaurants, squatted places, and any other cool locations we fancy. We share experiences and thoughts amongst each other. We are interconnected. Our clients and companies spread throughout a wide range of industries. We communicate in many languages; I speak English, German, in code, or in Dutch via online channels. We connect with others who are like us. Free WIFI is the first thing that we seek every time we visit a new place. We dress individually without any dress-code. We inspire. We break the rules and set the example based on our gut-feeling and experience. We love to talk about new stuff on the Internet that makes collaborating even more efficient and fun. In short, we are a new breed of independent innovators and game-changers that have joined the corporate workforce.

What’s in a name?

So far I don’t think there’s an official name coined for us yet. In Holland -where I’m originally from- they call the phenomenon “het nieuwe werken”, which means something like “the new way of working”. But this term is biased as it also refers to the fact that more and more companies experiment with letting their employees work from home. I call us Nomadworkers. Nomadworking is a buzzword I once picked up in an article and somehow remembered, so I started using it. It fits because we’re on the move all the time.

Where can you find us?

Almost 50% of the time I work from one shared office space in Zurich, Switzerland. For the past 3 years I own a seat and desk there (definitely not Herman Miller or Aeron furtniture!), with no more than a screen and a printer. I could easily do without this place, but it gives me a place of belonging and I keep on meeting interesting people there.

Toolkit

My toolkit (while traveling or @home) consists of the following essentials:

• a neat good-quality leather bag with a shoulder strap, in which I carry my
• 13″ Macbook Pro, which is wrapped in a
• Tucano second skin

The bag is hand luggage at airports and the shoulder strap is crucial for carrying the bag around on my old Vespa when in Zurich. Furthermore, I never go to meetings without my

• A5 black Moleskine notebook

because I don’t like to use any technology during important meetings to make sure I’m (perceived as) giving my full attention to the other people at the table.

I also always carry my

 
• iPhone 4 with me, which enables me to do everything on the Mac, but mobile.

In terms of working philosophy, I’m a sucker for Getting Things Done (GTD), which I could not live without. I use the following few applications for GTD to arrange all my work:

• Google Apps - to access and manage all my email addresses of myself and from clients in one place. Most importantly, they are easy to retrieve (unlike ancient Ms Outlook for example)
• Remember The Milk – a simple to do lists for anything with a due date
• Evernote – to capture anything that would otherwise stick in my head, which I don’t want. I.e. any loose stuff without a due date that I want to document for no specific time (like photos, interesting URL’s, executive summaries, scrabbles, scanned documents (I HATE paper), administration, ideas that pop-up during travel, etc.
• Highrise – by 37signals. A simple and clean contact management system at low-cost. It also tracks leads and projects. I throw all meeting notes in there too.
• (Spotify – a great new program to manage my music everywhere I am).

All the software above I can access on both desktop as on mobile. They are for free or very cheap too, and they also synchronize automatically so there’s never any hassle.

So far my introduction to the nomadworking phenomenon. I’m very curious to hear what others are experiencing, so please add any thoughts or comments below.