Writing this from Sevilla, Spain, where my wife and I have been living for about 2 weeks.
We've just completed 2 years of a digital nomad lifestyle, having previously spent between 1 to 11 months each in Madrid, Buenos Aires, Tulum (Mexico), Portland (Oregon) and Edinburgh. Of course those are bases from which we've also visited Mallorca, Granada, Lisbon, Uruguay, Santiago (Chile), Mendoza, Mérida, Dublin and Paris. This is done while working on average 7-8 billable hours, 5-6 days a week, with some gaps in between for "touristy stuff."
All of the advice in the article about settling in to a new place rings true, particularly the internet connectivity situation. We've had difficulties in about half the places we've lived, but have also had the good fortune of incredibly considerate locals who have bent over backwards to assist.
Because we're both working, we decided to keep our house in Los Angeles and rent it out. We started with my friend acting as a property manager, but have since found that as long as we have a handyman, plumber and various other maintenance and repair people, the middleman only causes delays in communication. It's pretty amazing what can be done from the other side of the world.
We'll be in Europe until the end of January (as Americans, the Schengen agreement is a continual thorn in our plans), and haven't yet determined where we'll head next. Financially, the expensive part is hopping from place to place. If you can find somewhere whose tourist visas allow 6 months (UK, Mexico) or where you can pop across the border for a day and get it renewed (Argentina), you can cut down on a lot of expenses (and stress) by planting yourself for longer.
All that said, I highly recommend it. The opportunity to experience other cultures, learn a new language, and gain a different perspective on life is invaluable. Even for the process of winnowing your "stuff" down to what you're willing to carry with you while traveling for months on end.
It also has the side benefit of making you one of the more interesting people at any gathering you attend.
I don't know if they ended up being the acquiring party, but one of the people seriously considering the purchase reached out privately to my company (a Sortfolio customer), with a few short questions. It was a polite email that made it clear they were looking for opportunities to improve the service (as well as address the original concerns about credit card info not carrying over), so I was happy to provide my feedback. I'm happy Sortfolio has been acquired and plan to stick with the service.
I notice the new version is running on basecamp.com. The old version is at basecamphq.com and 37signals always made a point about the domain not mattering as much as the product name. I imagine there's a follow-up to that saying that if your product becomes successful there's nothing wrong with going and grabbing the pure domain (thinking Dropbox, Instagram and others. Or basically the opposite of Color.)
"Project name is bigger than domains" is a part of lie part of true: Product and it's name important but if you can't get the domain just be arrogant and say to people it doesn't matter. But because you know the importance of the domain name , when you have money and chance get the domain and rule the world.
We purchased the domain from the previous owner a few months ago. We wanted to use it to launch the new Basecamp since the Classic version used basecamphq.com. We wanted to keep the URLs separate so this seemed as good a time as any to make it happen.
That was the first thing that caught my eye too. I would tend to agree with the assessment that a perfect domain name is negligible compared to having a successful product offering. You can take that too far, but for the most part a domain name doesn't matter all that much. It's a stupid investment for a struggling entrepreneur to spend thousands of dollars for a new domain. I think another significant reason they decided to go ahead and purchase the domain now, is that it was part of a larger effort to rebrand the product.
"Your Basecamp Classic URL (which looks like yoursubdomain.basecamphq.com) stays the same. New Basecamp accounts are hosted on the basecamp.com domain. New Basecamp accounts don't have subdomains, so all accounts are at basecamp.com."
It looks like they're gradually simplifying. They originally launched with a range of domains you could choose from: projectpath.com, clientsection.com, grouphub.com, etc. with a subdomain. Then it went to subdomains on basecamphq.com, and now just basecamp.com with no subdomains.
That's exactly what happened. It was actually confusing for people since different people on the same project were referring to Basecamp with different names. That's one of the reasons we migrated everyone to basecamphq.com and now, basecamp.com on the new accounts.
Prior to a year of living and working abroad, my wife and I hired a Spanish immigration lawyer to provide us with visa options (as Americans we can typically only remain in the European Schengen Zone for 90 out of every 180 days). I've got a web development company and all U.S.-based clients, so in theory would have been bringing money into the Spanish economy. The lawyer came back with 3 options for me:
1. Be a student
2. Retire (with proof of savings/income)
3. Be independently wealthy (again with bank account proof)
So we lived in Madrid for our allotted 3 months and then moved on to Buenos Aires, where the visa restrictions are a lot more lax and they have a year-long visa option for foreign business owners had we decided we wanted to stay there.
Anecdotally, the number of American expats in Madrid was minuscule to the number we met in Buenos Aires, and the ones in Spain were there almost always after having been sponsored by large companies.
As a national of Argentina, I can say that the number of expats here is high, because our National Constitution states that it is "to all men in the world who wish to dwell on Argentine soil". And article 25 reads: "The Federal Government will encourage European immigration, and it will not restrict, limit or burden with any taxes the entrance into Argentine territory of foreigners who come with the goal of working the land, improving the industries and teach the sciences and the arts."
(Further reading in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Argentina )
This leads to an explicit invitation to come, to everyone who wishes to work here. In the las 3 years, almost 45k people came to live here, from Spain alone. (This article from El Mundo is from 2010, the number has increased since then, http://www.elmundo.es/america/2010/11/30/argentina/129114534...).
And a nice incentive is that there is A LOT of demand here for developers. I hope you enjoy your stay here! =)
Does Forbes.com have a print URL? I couldn't find one (did find a print.css which does almost nothing to optimize for printing), and I'd rather not encourage their splitting the article onto 4 separate pages by clicking through.
Actually Dogfish founder Sam Calagione addresses that at 10:30 in the video — "Like most small businesses, it's not like we've got focus groups and separate floors of MBAs squirreled away to give us guidance and consultance (sic). You just wing it and use whatever tools are cheap and at hand."
They do, however, test their new brews in their tasting room, and the ones that are well-received are produced in volume. Maybe more hallway usability testing than a focus group?
Also, I'm impressed they kept the part at about 11:09 where Calagione says, "We don't really spend any money on advertising or marketing…" – sure the video is focusing on Apps integration, but he's talking about Google's core business!
They do credit me, there's a link at the bottom of the page to the piece where I describe the idea. I should probably do one of my own (but I'm busy with other stuff).
A small detail I found interesting while watching Minority Report recently: among all the futuristic innovations displayed and mentioned in this article, when it began to rain, people still opened up traditional black umbrellas.
Umbrellas have been in use for thousands of years. Until we get head-mounted lasers that vapourise every incoming raindrop (probably not a great idea in itself) we're pretty much stuck with 'em.
Or you could wear waterproof clothing. Where I am in Europe I don't see too many umbrellas. They have a saying here: "There is no bad weather, just bad clothing".
I have yet to see waterproof clothing that fulfils 2 criteria which umbrellas easily do:
- Your face and hands don't get wet, even when the rain is blowing sideways. (Coat-only waterproofing also leaves you with wet jeans and shoes.)
- You don't get basically just as wet anyhow on account of sweat being trapped inside the clothes. (Even "breathable" stuff traps sweat when its outside is slick with water.)
lots of materials innovation has made wearing water proof jackets, pants and shoes way more awesome than the smelly, hot, unbreathing linseed oil covered cloaks of a hundred years ago.
An honest attempt to improve the umbrella, perhaps, but it looks both ridiculous and claustrophobic. (edit: Why do we describe small spaces as claustrophobic rather than claustrophobia-inducing? We don't describe spiders as arachnophobic or wide open spaces as agoraphobic, do we?)
There must be a better solution to umbrellas getting inverted. Why do they even have to bend that way?
If you make the umbrella ribs more rigid you will tend to make them heavier. You could improve the leverage of the braces between the stem and the ribs by attaching the braces farther out on the ribs and lower down on the stem, but that will collide with the owner's head unless they hold the umbrella higher, which will cause more leakage and catch more wind and make it harder to brace the stem against your body in a wind.
I'd be very hesitant to claim that I could design a better umbrella. They've been evolving for a very long time. Maybe modern materials would help, but I for one wouldn't dare buy a carbon-fiber umbrella because I just know I'd leave it on a bus or something. Cheapness is a feature too.
Meanwhile, the hilarious invention at the link not only looks ridiculous, but I'd have to be convinced that it wouldn't drip all over my lower body. And how on earth do you carry it when it's folded up? A big feature of the standard umbrella design is that it's not that hard to carry or store while folded.
I have a nice waterproof hat from Outdoor Research and a Gore-Tex jacket. For serious swimming I've also got waterproof pants and even gaiters. That combination seems like it would be superior to the space helmet.
As a Senz owner, was the grandparent a comment on company innovation or user adoption?
As great as the Senz is, it lacks one of a regular umbrella's most compelling features; its handle is inconvenient to use, and, combined with the lack of a pointy end, you can't use it as a walking stick of sorts. This also makes umbrellas feel less cumbersome, because they still serve a purpose, when it is not raining.
(And it also makes it more difficult to hum Singing in the Rain to yourself and pretend you're Gene Kelly.)
Yep, you just described my two biggest problems with my Senz. Add a curved handle and a pointed bottom (even just a replaceable metal nub) and now you've got the perfect umbrella.
We've just completed 2 years of a digital nomad lifestyle, having previously spent between 1 to 11 months each in Madrid, Buenos Aires, Tulum (Mexico), Portland (Oregon) and Edinburgh. Of course those are bases from which we've also visited Mallorca, Granada, Lisbon, Uruguay, Santiago (Chile), Mendoza, Mérida, Dublin and Paris. This is done while working on average 7-8 billable hours, 5-6 days a week, with some gaps in between for "touristy stuff."
All of the advice in the article about settling in to a new place rings true, particularly the internet connectivity situation. We've had difficulties in about half the places we've lived, but have also had the good fortune of incredibly considerate locals who have bent over backwards to assist.
Because we're both working, we decided to keep our house in Los Angeles and rent it out. We started with my friend acting as a property manager, but have since found that as long as we have a handyman, plumber and various other maintenance and repair people, the middleman only causes delays in communication. It's pretty amazing what can be done from the other side of the world.
We'll be in Europe until the end of January (as Americans, the Schengen agreement is a continual thorn in our plans), and haven't yet determined where we'll head next. Financially, the expensive part is hopping from place to place. If you can find somewhere whose tourist visas allow 6 months (UK, Mexico) or where you can pop across the border for a day and get it renewed (Argentina), you can cut down on a lot of expenses (and stress) by planting yourself for longer.
All that said, I highly recommend it. The opportunity to experience other cultures, learn a new language, and gain a different perspective on life is invaluable. Even for the process of winnowing your "stuff" down to what you're willing to carry with you while traveling for months on end.
It also has the side benefit of making you one of the more interesting people at any gathering you attend.