According to the latest entry in Wikipedia, digital nomads are a new breed of resourceful entrepreneurs who are able to live and work anywhere they please. Nomadic workers typically enjoy a flexible and fulfilling lifestyle, leveraging technology and the Internet to work remotely—from home, the coffee shop, Internet cafe, or even to collaborate remotely with teams anywhere in the world. This flexibility and freedom is increasingly attractive in current economic conditions, which is leading more and more people to seek out work they can do on their own terms, that is more interesting to them, that they can do from home or from anywhere.
I have made the majority of my living from online endeavors since 1990. After completing a large online project from my home office in 2008, I decided I needed a change of scenery and searched for an opportunity that would make it worthwhile for me to travel. I knew I could run my business from the road as long as a I had a great Internet connection. On August 12, 2008 the following video was uploaded to YouTube. After watching it, I was certain becoming a digital nomad was the right move for me and began to search for an opportunity that would enable me to try the digital nomad lifestyle.
One year later Computerworld magazine published an article titled “Is digital nomad living going mainstream?” From it, I learned that a lot of other like-minded folks were taking a similar path. Because I knew I eventually wanted to end up in Oregon, the state where I was born, I chose projects that would enable me to spend most of my time in the Pacific Northwest. Admittedly, I have not been on the road much for the past couple years, primarily because I had to take care of some unexpected health issues. During most of 2011 I battled colon cancer and while I ended up ‘cancer free’ I was told it could be as much as a year before I would feel fully recovered. So, right now, I’m spending most of my time in Central Oregon.
