Digital Nomad Contest Finalists
February 1, 2010 by Jacques De Bruyne · 6 Comments
The deadline has arrived for the Digital Nomad Video Contest and we have some great videos, including a couple of last minute entries. There are some amazing stories of people from around the world living the digital nomad lifestyle. Videos submitted included a couple of around the world trips, a paparazzi photographer chasing George Clooney in Belgium, a laptop theft on Walls St. and a day in the life of a digital nomad.
It is in the panel of judges hands now. They will pick the best video of the top ten to award the grand-prize of a digital nomad survival kit (netbook, Blackberry, MiFi, headset and Nomadesk) or 2 $1000 vouchers for airline tickets. All ten of the finalists will receive one year free of Nomadesk Team or Personal Fileserver.
Here are some of the finalists we thought exemplified the digital nomad experience. Feel free to let us know your favorites in the comments.
Open Letter from a Nomadesk User
January 7, 2010 by Jacques De Bruyne · Leave a Comment
Written by Sacha Vekeman
Sacha is a passionate technology marketeer, architect and founder of two UK start-ups and part-time management consultant working with CEO’s and Senior VPs at technology giants and high-tech start-ups in strategic marketing, business development, fundraising, visioneering and corporate development.
Sacha’s LinkedIn profile.
I am a gadget freak after having tested thousands pieces of software. I am always on the outlook for a software update, a completely new online service, or a beta release from a giant software maker.
Professionally I use software to increase my productivity. I am always looking for new tools that allow me to work more efficient, getting things done much faster and allowing me to communicate in a much more direct way. In a high-touch communicative world where individuals have 500 FaceBook friends, 1000 LinkedIn contacts and 3000 Twitter followers you need good technology.
I am very precise when testing and making new software part of my daily workflow. Also with Nomadesk I was cautious. I’ve waited until version 3 was released before installing and testing the software. What I first noticed was the friendly graphics and light install in terms of size and download.
After a smooth install of Nomadesk in less than 5 minutes on a Windows Vista computer the first thing which surprised me was the exact, but deep integration into my windows filesystem. I also noticed the simplicity of only having to go through 3, maybe 4 steps to configure Nomadesk.
I am very organized, I don’t like search for my personal structure. Search is a tool that makes you forget order, structure and hierarchy. Having to think hard how to structure something doesn’t make you forget and creates meaning and purpose to your content, that’s why I was a serious user of the Microsoft My Documents folder.
My Documents folder was organized in such a way that I could easily see a decade of career behind me with about 30,000 files created. Thirty thousand files in about ten years; talk about being a knowledge worker.
This excludes my other private digital assets, such as pictures (about 15,000 since 2003) and music (about 24,000 mp3s since 2006). I am not into video, besides buying some DVDs, which I don’t copy electronically (not yet I guess).
After having tested Nomadesk on my home desktop and professional laptop for four weeks, I noticed how fast it all works! And I can tell you, speed is everything, certainly when you deal with an enormous set of files and folders. I don’t like things slow: a non responding Windows Explorer or a slowly opening Word file, it just ruins my day.
I soon upgraded my PC to Windows7 and decided to subscribe to the Nomadesk service, as I had re-think how I organize my files and folders. It’s time to tidy up, and organize myself for the future, the next decade, maybe half century, as I see myself still working on my computer at the age of 85, accessing files since I was 25. That’s over 60 years of files I intent to keep and preserve.
Having checked with the 24/7 support operations of Nomadesk if Windows7 was supported, I decided to go for it. Again a smooth install, new OS and a new filestructure. (Opportunity for Nomadesk, tie V3 around the launch of windows7 !!! When people upgrade their OS, they want to do things different).
Once Nomadesk was up and running I started to create team servers as following. For every company I work for I created a new team server. Why? Because I work as a consultant and want to offer a differentiating service to allow 24/7 access to all files I have created for my clients, by an easy sharing environment, but while not having to take the penalty of taking massive amounts of time to upload files individually, work directly in an online service such as google Apps (I am not always online, but like to work wherever I can) or using online/offline sharing tools that are slow, slow, and slow!!!
Setting up a Team Fileserver is easy, and allows you to create it as some kind of network drive. The capacity of the team server is serious, 106 GB, certainly more than enough as a company folder, as my rule of thumb in professional life is 5 years of work is 10 GB of data, or 2 GB per year; a lot of capacity available.
Also the scalability is nice. Just add another Team Fileserver or Personal Fileserver and you have another 100 GB at your disposal. This is a must, certainly in a massively digital world, where data storage is still at the heart of the digital economy, just having returned from a two-day StorageExpo exhibition.
The choice between a Team and Personal Fileserver is not a functionality choice, but a sharing choice. I don’t use personal servers as much yet as team servers, as everything I do in life, I want to share, even privately, hence the success of Facebook, Flickr or YouTube. Therefore, I also organize my family life with my wife around a Team Fileserver, allowing her to access my personal files and digital media over Nomadesk. She can even access my professional folders, in case something happens to me.
Digital Nomad Contest Deadline Extended
December 22, 2009 by Jacques De Bruyne · Leave a Comment
Fire up those webcams and camcorders for the holidays. The Digital Nomad Video Contest has been extended to January 31, 2010. Share your best Digital Nomad story and win a Digital Nomad Survival Kit consisting of a Dell Netbook, Blackberry Bold 9000, Novatel MiFi, Logitech headset, backpack and three-year subscription to Nomadesk, OR… two $1000 vouchers for airline tickets to travel anywhere.
The way this works
Of course, read the official rules for the details, but it works something like this:
Make a video that tells a Digital Nomad story. It could be a great story told from your webcam or take us on your holiday vacation. It doesn’t need to be a big production, just entertain us. After you upload it to the Digital Nomad YouTube Group, tweet it, Facebook it, do what ever it takes to get people to vote for your video. The top ten vote getters will automatically win a one-year Team Fileserver from Nomadesk and be entered in the finals.
The top ten videos will be judged by our illustrious panel on originality, use of technology and impact of story.
Good luck and have a happy and safe holiday.
Share Your Digital Nomad Story and Win
October 20, 2009 by Jacques De Bruyne · Leave a Comment
Calling all Digital Nomads. Nomadesk wants to hear from you. Make a video telling us your best/most outrageous/success story and you can win a Digital Nomad Survival Pack, complete with a Dell netbook, Blackberry phone, Novatel MiFi, Nomadesk fileserver and more.
Join the Digital Nomad Video Contest group on YouTube and submit your video. Advertise your video on your Facebook page and Tweet about it. Do whatever it takes to get everyone you know to vote for your video. The top ten vote-getters will win a free Nomadesk team fileserver for a year and their videos will be judged by our panel of judges. The winner will receive the aforementioned Digital Nomad Survival Pack.
Get the rules and more info about the prize here.
I am a Digital Nomad
October 13, 2009 by Jacques De Bruyne · Leave a Comment
Describe your craziest/most productive nomadic day… contestants are encouraged to submit a video, telling about their craziest/most productive day working from a remote location. In this era of connectivity, people are choosing to conduct business from anywhere, and many are earning a solid living while exploring the planet, sojourning to exciting locations, or simply working while on the road in between client visits. Whatever your situation may be, we want to hear how you are being a Digital Nomad.
The contest starts Monday, October 19th. Check back for more information on the 19th.
The US 101 Effect
September 16, 2009 by Filip Tack · 11 Comments
United States Highway 101 runs north and south along the Pacific coast all the way from California to Washington. In Northern California, “US 101” is the vein that runs through the technology world’s famed Silicon Valley directing people between San Jose and San Francisco and beyond.
By driving up and down, north and south, every day, you get a sense of what’s happening in the area. I recently spent a couple weeks there, working and exploring, away from my life in Belgium, trying to grasp a sense of what makes Silicon Valley, well, Silicon Valley. What is its essence? Why do new technologies pop up so quickly? And, how do they get very rapidly adopted and receive good Public Relations coverage?
During my time in the US, as a Digital Nomad, I traveled with my family while juggling my business life, dealing with the Venture Capitalist (VC) community, networking with entrepreneurs and handling press calls. Unlike some of my American friends, I felt fortunate to do the daily commute along the US 101. It gave me time to think and it somehow sparked the notion of “The US 101 Effect.”
The US 101 Effect…
The first couple of days of my Bay Area stay, I was clearly too caught up in my old European paradigm, perhaps too jetlagged also, to get the picture. The very first day, for instance – driving south from San Francisco airport – I noticed this giant billboard next to the freeway. There was our competitor, box.net, waging war against Microsoft. I immediately thought “Why on earth spend good marketing money on a single billboard that probably no one notices, and challenging Microsoft, for Pete’s sake? Good luck!”
A couple of days later, driving back from downtown “Fog City” on the US 101, I witnessed a similar billboard. This time it was more like the clash of the titans: Google versus Microsoft. I was puzzled! But as early as the next day it dawned on me when suddenly both billboards got covered on the TV news and gained wide-reaching bloggers’ attention: one billboard, on a 50 mile highway stretch, that’s all Box and Google needed to get the world’s attention?! I suddenly became very intrigued.
There is indeed something very exceptional about this US 101 – “US Tech’s El Camino Real.” It exhibits some sort of “economy of focus,” because so many people who use it are involved in the high tech industry in one way or another. It doesn’t matter who you are, in PR, a venture capitalist, or just a user of technology, everyone lives within and gets life from that ecosystem, especially in the geographic area that spreads from San José to San Francisco.
While on an average highway 99% of the people couldn’t care less, the US 101 is the life vein of a distinct and vibrant community. The commuters listen, they pay attention and contribute to the conversation; it appears they are genuinely interested. That is why a zeppelin can fly above the US 101 (and CA highway 85, one of its side-rivers) highlighting an at-home genetics test and its web site www.23andme.com. Every day indeed (at least in August), an enormous blimp gets airborne from Moffett Field and flies over the road infrastructure of Silicon Valley, because the 23andme executives know that 99% of the US 101 commuters give a damn. They genuinely want to know what is the next best thing to buy, to invest in, to work for, to sell, to cover, etc.
“Oh Dierbaar België…” – “Oh Dearest Belgium…”
In contrast, my home country of Belgium really lacks the entrepreneurial spirit found in California. And, that’s not just my opinion. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, a program that assesses national levels of entrepreneurial activity, conducts extensive research throughout Europe and has found that Belgium has the lowest level of high-growth expectation entrepreneurial activity in Europe.
“In the United States there is more early-stage entrepreneurial activity than in EU countries and Japan… Some European countries – most notably Belgium, Germany and France – consistently have the lowest rates of entrepreneurial activity levels. This possibly reflects the relative risk aversion of European inhabitants and their declared relative preference for employment over self-employment…”
Global Entrepreneurship Monitor
2008 Executive Report
As much as I regret it, I believe that this has a lot to do with the overriding sentiment in our country that success is unaccepted and failure anticipated, while in the US, the spirit feels like success is anticipated, failure accepted – with the chance to move forward and try again. This is also known as the “tall poppy syndrome.” We truly need to change this mindset if we ever want to play ball.
Those who live and breathe technology can only be envious of the Silicon Valley ecosystem that seems to have it all, in but a 50-mile radius. Simply have a look at any Silicon Valley VC’s portfolio. They really don’t need to venture far afield. There is so much fuel and wind in the Valley, enough to start California wildfires of new businesses, innovative technology and products.
Even in the depths of the recession, there is a positive spirit in the US to move forward, an initiative that says: “We can’t rely on government. We must push through the economy ourselves.” In the US, you feel a sense that “The glass is half full.” Most Belgians see this as naïve, but it treats the Americans well. They elected a President on the theme of “Yes, we can!” instead of “I don’t know, should we!?” a more Belgian sentiment.
Maybe it’s genetics after all
The genetic makeup of the US society is the immigrants, the people who fought their way to a new life in a new place. It’s especially the case in Silicon Valley. The population surrounding the US 101 is not made up of your average American; they come from all over the world. If we used the genetic testing of 23andme.com, we would surely find the entrepreneurship gene in their genetic wiring. They are already adventurous, risk seeking, reward-seeking, so they tolerate that atmosphere and embrace it. The area surrounding the US 101 invites that attitude.
It took me a while to grasp the concept of the success of those billboards here, but I talked to people and saw how it affected them. Nobody would care in Europe. But in Silicon Valley, people talk about it. It’s a close community. It’s amazing how many people know each other, even though a lot of mileage is covered. In fact, people probably know who the guy is flying the zeppelin with the web site blazoned across the bottom, past the billboards of the warring software companies.
Maybe it’s time to stoke some business fires here in Belgium with a billboard of my own. I am hoping the wind shifts soon.
Are you a Digital Nomad?
September 8, 2009 by Jacques De Bruyne · Leave a Comment
With the rise in technology, a new breed of worker is gaining popularity. Beyond telecommuting, the Digital Nomad’s office is anywhere they choose.
Top 10 Tools for a Digital Nomad
September 8, 2009 by Filip Tack · 7 Comments
I am a Digital Nomad. I run a small, but rapidly growing, company based in Belgium with offices in Atlanta and customers around the globe. In the effort to put Nomadesk on the map, I need to get out into the world. While I’m out promoting and running the company, I rely on technology to help me accomplish the work and tasks for success, while keeping in touch with co-workers, family and friends.
I don’t have the deep pockets that a large company has to invest in technology, so I’ve culled my list of critical, need-to-have, technology tools down to the following 10 items I have with me at all times. The first four are the hardware essentials, number five holds it all together, and the last five are the software programs vital to my nomadic digital lifestyle.
Hardware essentials:
1. Laptop. This contains the output of my productivity and the fruits of my brain, meaning all the digital documents, excel spreadsheets, email, and presentations necessary for running a business. My Vaio laptop has a video camera that keeps me connected to business associates and family (we’ll discuss this more in number 9).
2. Smartphone. Of course, this is my phone, but it also replaces my laptop when I need to respond to email quickly, refer to my schedule, and keep in touch when I’m not in an office. I have an HTC, similar to a Blackberry. The camera on the phone comes in handy for capturing and sharing my life on the road.
3. 3G/Wi-Fi modem. Preferably, this is a 3G Router, like Novatel’s MiFi to make that connection when I am out in the middle of nowhere. This technology lets you create your own wireless network. I like to share the joy with other digital nomads, so they can access their email, their files, helping build a community through Digital Nomad socialism.
4. Headset + Mic. Although it’s not really necessary, this serves a more practical point for sound clarity and to not disturb the people around me. I use a Logitech brand combined headset and mic, which both cancels noise and helps me focus on the job at hand.
5. Ruggedized backpack. This is a very important element of my nomadic lifestyle. My backpack protects my laptop and all my gadgets through airports and planes, taxis and restaurants, hotels and offices. [I bought one at IKEA]
Software Essentials:
1. Nomadesk. In order to secure, sync, and share my valuable data, I use my Nomadesk fileservers. In fact, it’s all I use; I don’t store any of my data outside of Nomadesk. The fruits of my brain are confidential and I don’t want anyone to see them until I’m ready to share. I want to keep all my productivity on hand, but in a safe place. At the same time, I want to be able to share information, collaborate easily with my colleagues while I’m on the road and access it all whether I am online or off. It doesn’t matter if something happens to all the hardware, if a truck runs over my rugged backpack, I lose it or it gets stolen, I feel safe, because it’s encrypted, safe and backed-up.
2. 3G/Wi-Fi data plan. I need have a data plan for access to the Internet, for all the benefits of the 3G network. You can use Boingo or iPass for the WIFI. I like these WIFI services in which you have one piece of software that logs you on with the same account; makes billing and payment so much simpler and you don’t need to pull out your credit card all of the time.
3. E-mail/Calendar. I use my email and calendar synced together on a hosted exchange. Whether it’s Google, Yahoo or whatever doesn’t matter, what does matter is knowing where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be there, with the information you need.
4. VoIP. For me, this is Skype and it’s a lifeline for me to talk to and see people, using the video camera on my laptop. The messages you send out to the world with all those electronic devices obliterate the personal connection that a real face-to-face conversation provides. It’s just so much nicer to see someone’s reaction when they talk. In general, communication comprises 20% words, 20% intonation and 60% body language. (That’s why someone invented emoticons — all those smiley faces — to put context to your words.) Digital Nomads need a means to see each other and Skype offers that to me.
5. Local desktop applications. Experience has taught me that it’s not realistic to be online all the time. Microsoft Office provides all the software you need that sits on the desktop. Although there are other solutions, I stick to the standard. I like the speed of local applications; Nomadesk takes care of the synchronization.
I know there are many more I could add to my list, but, in addition to the expense, I also know firsthand the importance of traveling light.
What are your essential Digital Nomad tools?