The Virtual Office Of A Digital Nomad

by Daniel Berch of Techdirt / Sep 26

As an entrepreneur and small business owner, I spend most of my time working out of a “virtual office.” While it’s not possible to go 100% paperless, it *is* possible to reduce paper significantly and keep most work on the laptop. When I’m on the road, I have my Samsonite 22″ suitcase with 10 year warranty that I bought on clearance (best $20 I ever spent). A Targus laptop bag, and also a fold-up canvas bag that’s good for any odds and ends that might accumulate during the course of a trip.

My laptop of choice is a super-light IBM thinkpad. A spare battery is well worth its weight in gold. I’ve used Dell laptops in the past, but they’re just not built to withstand my sledgehammer-style typing. Nothing more annoying than losing a key or having it jam up.

With a 3G PC card, finding internet access is no longer the problem it once was. As long as I can find an unused gate at the airport terminal, or a well-positioned table at a coffee shop or hotel within 6 hrs of booting up, I’ll be fine.

More importantly, however is backup and storage. I have an external hard drive that I back up to every few weeks. I also have an encrypted file system on my ipod. (NEVER store files on an ipod unencrypted, since those things are so easy to lose.) I hear there are SaaS backup options, as well, but I haven’t tried any.

My ergonomics are absolutely horrible. I will likely be blind and crippled in a few years. I’ve also heard that keeping a laptop on the lap causes infertility. How’s that for lacking work/life balance!

I don’t have any physical security systems to protect my laptop. I don’t let it out of my sight when I’m travelling, and when I’m at a client I rely on the board room being protected.  I should probably do more in this regard (or at least combine physical security with encryption) – but the low probability risk does not justify the time. It also helps that I don’t have state-of-the-art equipment that the thieves drool over.

Finally, I would say that one of my challenges with mobility is keeping everything in sync. I often forget to sync my blackberry to my computer, and my computer to my external backup. I have redundancies, which help, but are not 100% redundant. So losing the laptop (or the blackberry, or the suitcase) would set me back at least a few days.

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