Going Nomadic Business Everywhere by Jack Krupansky In the fall of 1994 I moved to New York City to live and work, planning to stay a year or two. Well, it's now April 1996 and after 18 months I'm getting ready to move on. Nominally I will be "moving" to France, but I'm actually moving to nowhere or everywhere. I hope to become a nomad and move around without any real home. I will have a legal residence in some state so I can have a driver's license and vote, but I don't think I'll ever again be able to predict where I'll be two months in the future. Most of my "work" will be on some sort of notebook PC and over "the net." I'll still be doing some work for my current consulting client, but with much less direct contact. This article describes some of my preliminary ideas and plans for my proposed change in work/life-style. My next article will elaborate on additional considerations as well as a progress report on actual steps taken down the path to being a complete nomad. By the time you read this article I will have already taken many of those steps! South Pacific Software About 16 years ago I came up with the idea of living and working on a boat sailing around the South Pacific. This was before notebook computers, so the idea was that when I wanted to work I'd pull into some port, set up a satellite disk and connect to "the net". I didn't work through the economics, I don't sail, and it was an absolutely crazy idea for an "employee" to have, so I put the idea aside. But the kernel of that idea was the same as my current scheme. I want to be able to drift around to wherever suits my fancy and fit my work in wherever it fits. Before that idea I had never considered a lifestyle in which work was thoughtfully integrated rather than being eight hours of prime time lopped out of the middle of every day. Why? When I was in school I was always working and never had the time, money, or interest to wander. I grew up in southern New Jersey, went to college (and worked all the time) in northern New Jersey, immediately went to work for Digital Equipment Corporation in Massachusetts, went to work for Wang Labs, moved to New Hampshire, and then moved to Colorado to work for a CAD startup company. My first trip to Europe wasn't until after I moved to Colorado. Shortly after I got to Colorado I began to travel. I took a bus to San Francisco (but flew back first class.) I went to Europe for Labor Day weekend (out on the Concorde, back on a normal plane.) I took advantage of incredibly cheap over-Saturday night air fares and spent weekends in a lot of different places. Ten years ago I quit the CAD job after a year and began my first experience as a "consultant", working part-time for the company and part-time for another software startup company in Woburn Massachusetts. I actually "commuted" between Colorado and Massachusetts (out on Sunday and back on Wednesday) and enjoyed it since it broke up the intensity of a single job, gave me a change of pace, and I actually got paid for every hour I worked. I went back to the CAD company after another year as a "manager" and had a lot more control than before. I continued to fly places on weekends (including Alaska in February) until I got so fed up with the company that I was willing to sell back a big chunk of my founders stock (then publicly traded) at a steep discount rather than spend one more year of intense frustration (due to lack of control) waiting for it to vest. After I went out on my own I did just a little consulting, but mostly lived off my founder's stock (even through 1987.) I could then afford the time and money to do a bit more travel. I went to Scandinavia (on New Year's Eve), and even the Far East (for a month.) But all that travel was still as a tourist and I wasn't working during those trips. Even though I wasn't anywhere near being nomadic, the signs were there. Initially I had an apartment in Colorado while I still owned my house in New Hampshire. But I decided I didn't want another house. I then decided I didn't even want an entire apartment and found a house with three other people where I could rent just a room. My landlords said I was the ideal tenant since I paid my rent on time and was never there. I preferred working, walking, eating out, and flying to strange cities on weekends. I enjoy constant new input. I get very little out of seeing the same things, same places, same people every day. New York City has worked fairly well for me because even if you walk down the same street every day you see something new every time. Different people, filming of movies and commercials, rallies, protests, foreign dignitaries, confused tourists, etc. I look forward to traveling the French countryside with its farms, vineyards, towns, markets, trains, etc. It will be so different than anywhere else I've lived and I guess that's what makes it so appealing. Expectations A key part of my scheme is a radically different way of looking at expectations. In the past I would set lots of lofty goals and be disappointed when I didn't reach all of them. My new "goal" is to keep my "expectations" as low as possible while increasing the variety of new experiences (AKA opportunities) and increasing my attention towards capitalizing on unexpected opportunities. Serendipity will be my guide. I have ultra-high "unexpectations." I expect that I have not yet even imagined the things that I'll find most rewarding. France Before deciding on France, I had considered Washington, DC and Hong Kong. I picked France because it is a really interesting country with great food and for its central location. Countries like England, Germany, Italy, and Spain are a short trip away. Even Greece and Russia are close enough to consider for an easy mini-vacation. I do have two serious concerns. First, I hear the French smoke like chimneys. But they do have lots of outdoor cafes! Second, everyone says they are extremely rude, especially towards Americans. I can understand that. But since I tend to take an arms- length approach to social contact and don't intend to go around with an air of superiority (after all, it is their country) I think I'll be able to tolerate them. Language I currently know very little French. I considered taking some language lessons here, but I think I'll wait till I'm there. I'll try to memorize lots of nouns and verbs before I go, but I'll be more motivated when I get there and it'll be more of an adventure. I may also install the French version of Windows to force me to learn some French. Since I know what Windows is supposed to do I can then read the menus and on-line help in French. Then there are all the other non-French countries I'll be living/working in. It may be hopeless, so maybe I'll ignore the issue and push forward as if the issue didn't exist! Work Issues I'm not yet sure whether there are any special rules that affect me "working" in France. I won't have a job there so I think I can pretend to be a tourist. Worst case, every few months I "leave" the country and come back a few days later on another "trip". I'm not too worried about it, but it is something I'll have to resolve eventually, or maybe not! I won't have a phone or office or do any advertising. Maybe I should do a little advertising, but I can do it on the web! The Timeline By July 1, 1996 I expect to give up my office and start working on the move. By September 4th I'll be in Paris, France. I may stay in Paris for up to three months, but I intend to travel the countryside of France as well as live and work in the other countries of Europe. I'll stay over there at least a year, possibly eighteen months. Then I'll return to America and plan on wandering around America for about two years. And then we'll be in the 21st Century and I haven't the slightest clue what any of us will be doing. But I hope we can move on to opportunities that we haven't even imagined yet. Or maybe we can throw off a lot of the baggage we carry around and return to a lifestyle that is both simpler but more satisfying. Maybe we can figure out how to harness technology to make it work for us rather than us having to work for it (like Windows 95.) Customer Phone Calls Some customers really need a lot of handholding, either in person or over the phone. I'm worried that they will have second thoughts about doing business with me. But for new customers, my feeling is that if they can't embrace the new technology of e-mail and the web then I would rather not have them as my customers. Some limited phone support is still possible. They can e-mail me and arrange for me to call them at a certain time. Even from Europe where the long distance charges will be outrageous, the limited number of times I'll need to "resort" to phone contact will be more than compensated by the reduced cost of all other contact being either by cheap e-mail and web service. For a few key customers I can afford to visit them occasionally and the on-site contact should compensate for reduced phone contact. Internet The net is still trying to find its groove, but I believe it really does have a lot of potential, even with slow modem connections. Some of that potential is really real enough to use: e-mail, FTP to allow software downloads, the Web for product promotion, literature, and a "storefront" or virtual lobby. I expect to "sell" on-line but payment for now would be by good, old-fashion paper check or normal wire transfer. My Own Web Server A friend and I are currently in the process of setting up our own Web server at his home in Vermont. We could each pay an ISP (Internet Service Provider) for a virtual web site or continue to mooch off friendly third parties. But we would like to experiment with server-based applications since we feel that's where businesses will be willing to pay for sophisticated software. Applets are the rage, but we just don't see any angle that we can exploit that would give us an income comparable to a good consulting rate. Even if you have the #1 word processing/spreadsheet applet, the writing on the wall is that you need to give it away on the net to gain market/mind share to be exploited in some fuzzy way some time in the future. Custom server software is another story. My friend will take care of administering the machine and I'll pay the cost of the always-connected phone line (not more than $70 for the basic service plus $70 for the per-minute charges) and service provider ($150) or about $260 per month. I hope we can find a few other small entrepreneurs like ourselves to chip in a little. Promotion The Internet has a lot of potential for "free" promotion, but that potential has not been fully realized yet. I have lots of ideas, but no real "killer" approach yet for effectively promoting products on the net. Yeah I'm already in Yahoo, Lycos, and AltaVista, but that doesn't produce any substantial income. Software Catalog I'm daydreaming about some sort of on-line mall/catalog for us entrepreneurial engineers. I don't know where this will lead, but I figure we can start somewhere, experiment cheaply, and just try things until we come up with a good formula. The focus of this mall/catalog might be the products, services, expertise, and people involved with non- mainstream products. This site could end up as the place people go when they need special tools or special people to do custom work. I am thinking of letting people like the readers of this article setup web pages on this site for free. I think critical mass is essential for marketing promotion and if the catalog has enough goodies people will look at it and if they look at it they will see my products/services. The contents of the entire mall/catalog, including free evaluation software could be burnt onto a CD-ROM which could be sold to people who don't have the time or inclination to "surf the web" (let's call them "virtual couch potatoes.") I personally would be willing to spend $50 for a ROM which had a lot of good content. If us consultants put our resumes and expertise in a searchable database then I can see a lot of managers wanting to search that database. Or maybe we all chip in and master the CD-ROM and distribute a few hundred at some tradeshows. I don't know exactly how we'll profit from this, but at least it's an exciting concept to explore. Part of my enthusiasm for this concept is that what little business I have gotten from the web so far has been from various on-line catalogs from magazines and Microsoft as well as the Computer Select CD-ROM. But those channels have little flexibility, are not easy to update, and I feel are used more to promote the interests of the offerer than the listee. I hope to get a small piece of this site up and running by the time the follow-up to this article comes out. Another intriguing and exciting possibility is to provide a "front" for the site in traditional print media. Imagine reading this magazine, seeing an enticing page that has visual buttons that provide further detail. You just type in the URL for the ad into your Web browser and presto, you see the same image on the screen except now the buttons are active and take you off to categories and specific products/services. The ad would list the categories of products/service with terse but informative descriptions. A subset of the venders would pay to actually have there product/services illustrated and described in sub-ads which of course would be active buttons on the web page. This proposal addresses my biggest concern about the web which is that even with web-based promotion and search engines it is really just passive marketing whereas the ad is a more active approach. Feel free to e-mail your suggestions. Free Evaluation A free evaluation version of my software products will be available from my web site. They can be either directly accessed via FTP or a button on a web page. The goal is that the evaluation is very close to full-featured so the prospect can do a full evaluation of the product capabilities. But on the other hand, I don't want to eliminate all incentive to actually pay for the product. One idea is to have the product display a message box on startup that says the user accepts the "following licensing terms" or "the licensing terms in LICENSE.TXT that came with the product" The message should be obnoxious enough that no one in their right mind would allow it in their shipping product, but innocuous enough that it does not grossly interfere with the evaluation. By displaying the licensing terms you also have the electronic equivalent of a shrink wrap license. Payment I haven't offered credit card payment for over a year and don't feel that I've lost ANY sales because of it. The nature of my product and its customers is conducive to payment by check. In fact, my preferred customer is a company that orders by purchase order. They are the types of customer who are more likely to be placing larger orders. My European customers have preferred paying by wire transfer, so there will be no change for them when I get to Europe. My current consulting client is willing to pay me via wire transfer also. I currently have no bank account. I use a Paine Webber Resource Management Account which lets me write checks, use a gold MasterCard, get cash advances at banks and ATMs, and accepts wire transfers. Internet Service Although CompuServe's Internet service is not the greatest, the widespread availability of CompuServe in Europe will probably be my best bet for both e- mail and Internet/Web access. I am hoping that the larger cities will have Internet Cafes like New York and Boston. Then I could check my e-mail and do some file transfer without screwing around with foreign data connections. Fax Besides junk sales promotions, the only faxes of value I receive are purchase orders. But that's if you are trying to give ultra-fast turnaround. Customers can just as easily mail the paper the old fashion way. I'm tired of literature requests from foreign countries. It costs too much money to make the call and I hate having to figure out all those country codes and how to dial international. Phone For $175 a month I can have the business center forward my line to my friend in Vermont or my client in Massachusetts. They answer with their business name, but for the rare occasion when a real person (probably my mother or an IRS auditor) needs to leave me a message it's probably okay. That's a steep fee for this service, but that's the price I pay for not looking ahead. I should have gotten a remote call forwarding line from NYNEX for $20 a month and forwarded it to my business center number. Then I could easily redirect that number as I moved. Maybe I'll just drop the number and give people my friend's number or my 800 number. Luckily it is very easy to redirect my 800 number to another phone number. I might just go ahead and get the remote call forwarding line now and advertise it to get out of this mess. One of my better ideas is to just have my friend/client take messages for me and e-mail them to me. Low cost. Minimal effort. Everyone's happy. Nomadic Computer Since I'll no longer have a desktop, I won't be able to have a desktop computer. I can't wait. The only thing I'll miss is my 17-inch Trinitron monitor. There are six levels of computing support that I am considering: loaded notebook, modest notebook, subnotebook, palmtop, a few floppies, and my bare brain and paper notebook. My "minimal" needs are word processing, spreadsheet, remote access for CompuServe and Internet, and programming in my object-oriented programming language, Liana. Ideally I would also like to do 32-bit C/C++ application development using Visual C++ under Windows 95. Although it would be nice to also run Windows NT, my feeling is that the subset of the Win32 API that is common to Windows 95 and Windows NT is sufficient to meet the needs of most applications. A loaded notebook would have a reasonably fast Pentium, 32 MB of RAM, CD-ROM, fast modem, large color screen. It would run Windows95 so I could develop 32-bit apps. NT might be a better choice of operating system, but I'm a bit leery of its system requirements compared to Windows 95 for a portable computer. A machine like the new Toshiba Tecra 720CDT looks really nice, but is still heavy and won't last very long on batteries. But it would be good for moderate C/C++ development. A modest notebook might not be a Pentium or just a 75 Mhz Pentium, have only 16MB RAM, maybe no CD-ROM, cheap modem, smaller dual-scan color screen. Still running Win95 for 32-bit app development. It would be lighter weight but not very speedy for heavy C/C++ software development. Since I don't expect to be doing heavy C/C++ all the time, this may be fine. The main goals of a subnotebook computer are lightweight, convenience, and longer battery life. Scratch the CD-ROM, Windows 95, and 32-bit app development. It would have enough for me to develop 16-bit Liana applications, word processing and spreadsheet, and CompuServe/Internet access. If I need to do C/C++, it will have to wait until I get to a desktop machine. A lot of my work is simple text editing. So I might me able to get by with a palmtop computer with a 10MB flash memory card. I could also send and receive e- mail. Part of me would just as soon not carry around any computer. I can put all my critical code and files on a few floppies. Then all I need to do is go to a service bureau, Internet cafe, computer store, library, or wherever I can find a machine. I can carry around the Visual C++ CD-ROM and Microsoft Developer's Network CD-ROMs and quickly set up on any Windows 95/NT system. Modem connections, the French telephone system, variations in power adapters and availability of batteries are unknowns that I'm a little worried about. I may defer purchase of a machine until I get to France so I can buy a locally supported platform. Or maybe I just need two modems or two power adapters. Worst case, I take an American machine with me and buy either accessories or a complete computer based on how things turn out. Backup I don't plan on having a backup device other than floppy disks. My intent is to backup over the Internet using FTP and ZIP files. I might also keep a directory tree on my client's system containing both my files (uploaded ZIP files) as well as their files that I need. On a monthly or on-demand basis they can quickly and cheaply burn and ship me a CD- ROM which I can use as a "reference" to load files as needed. This also means that I could carry around a machine with less disk space and quickly load needed files off the CD-ROM. But it would mean having a CD- ROM drive connected to my portable machine. Remote Programming Even if I need to do some C/C++ programming, I don't necessarily need to build the app on my machine. I can edit source code on my machine, upload the source to my client or friend, and ask them to do the build and try it. Not the most efficient mode of operation, but maybe a very reasonable tradeoff rather than lug around a bulkier and more expensive machine that has little battery life. My Liana application development can be done in a similar mode, except that I can actually build and debug on even a minimal subnotebook. But rather than upload large .EXE files I can just upload modified source files and have my client rebuild. Paper Records As I am writing this article I have about a dozen boxes of paper files that I regularly or periodically reference. I have no intention of dragging all that stuff around with me. My current thought is to scan a small subset of the last year's records plus three years tax returns plus a few other random records and burn them on a CD-ROM. Then I'll actually have more convenient access and less paper. Then I'll store all the boxes with my friend who could retrieve an item should that be necessary. Visits "Home" I expect to visit my current consulting client for a week every six to eight weeks for the foreseeable future. I can then visit my friend and take care of any snail mail that may have accumulated. Software Updates If I really am gone for 18 months, there will be a number of software updates that I'll want to get. That's another reason to return "home" to the US periodically. Two or three times a year I can bring my machine with me, install the upgrades and off I go again. Another possibility is to have my client install my upgrades into my directory tree on their service and burn a CD-ROM for me with the update. Customers I do have a bunch of customers in Europe who I could actually visit. At a minimum this could allow me to travel around more "on business." Hopefully I can use my availability to drum up interest in either add-on business or consulting. Writing I have a lot of interest in writing and hope to write more technical articles. Maybe I'll write a book or maybe just a "diary" web site. I hope I can figure out how to write some non-technical articles. The French (or Bosnian) countryside might provide some sort of inspiration. Conclusions There's more to come, but this article should have given you a feel for what I'm trying to do. This change is just as scary as when I when out on my own ten years ago. Lots of anxiety, wondering if I'm doing the right thing. The worst part is the disorientation because I no longer have a good feeling for where anything is. But the benefits are so appealing compared to the risks that I just can't walk away from this exciting new opportunity. My new venture is a combination of workstyle and lifestyle. Even if my product ideas don't turn me into the next Microsoft, at least I should be able to enjoy myself while I try. Work does not have to be mindless and tedious or even inconvenient. In fact, why not figure out how to structure your life and work so the work is actually a welcome "break" from the excitement of the rest of your life? Jack Krupansky runs a one person software business, Base Technology, which develops and markets the Liana object-oriented programming language and CodeScript scripting language interpreter and offers Windows software development consulting. He may be reached at jack@basetechnology.com on the Internet, or at http://www.basetechnology.com.