It’s only June, but 2020 has already been a tough year for a lot of people and businesses. In some respects, though, the country-wide lockdowns induced by the COVID-19 pandemic have also opened up opportunities to evolve and embrace new ways of working and conducting business.
Like working remotely.
Instead of a privilege, working from home became a necessity for many employees over the past three months. Time even called it the ‘World’s Largest Work-from-Home Experiment’. For a lot of companies, that experiment proved to be hugely successful. Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Zillow, and Microsoft, for example, have announced that they’ll be extending their remote work programs – some of them ‘forever’.
As a community centered around remote workers who travel while working – i.e. “digital nomads” – WiFi Tribe is super excited about this trend. We love the benefits that come with working remotely – from no longer having to waste precious time on a daily commute to being able to work from anywhere (rather than just home). Remote work opens up a whole new lifestyle, which is now available to more people than ever before. And maybe you’re one of the people planning to put that new opportunity to good use by traveling while working remotely as soon as borders open up and flights start operating again.
But who really likes to travel by themselves all the time? Most digital nomads find themselves in typical digital nomad hubs like Canggu (Bali), Lisbon (Portugal), Playa del Carmen (Mexico), or Chiang Mai (Thailand) sooner or later, because that’s where we digital nomads congregate. Or they join coliving and coworking groups that travel the world together, one location at a time.
Below are some of the digital nomad groups and communities at the disposal of newly minted remote workers with wanderlust, just in time for when the world opens up again.
Coliving and Coworking Organizations in Year-Round Locations
We’ll start with organizations that focus especially on offering accommodation in beautiful locations for freelancers, startups, and remote working entrepreneurs and employees. Rather than focusing on traveling together, these companies make it easy for you to hop on and off at any of their fixed locations whenever suits you best. So if flexibility is your core need during your digital nomad travels, you should definitely check out the following organizations and their locations.
There’s Roam, an international network of coliving spaces, with static, year-round locations in San Francisco, London, Miami, and Tokyo. Pricing varies by location, starting at USD $500 per week ($1,800 per month), which includes a fully furnished private bedroom with ensuite bathroom, as well as free, unlimited access to all communal areas, a coworking space (open 24/7), shared kitchen, and laundry facilities.
Outpost is a network of coliving, coworking, and social spaces located in Bali and Cambodia. With Outpost, you can book either coliving + coworking starting at 63 USD/night, or a workspace only at 49 USD for 25 hours/month.
Outsite offers a myriad of coliving and coworking locations in the US alone (like NYC, Oahu, Lake Tahoe, and Austin) as well as internationally (like Tulum, Davos-Klosters, Lisbon, and Biarritz). You can also sign up for the Membership Program, which gets you up to 50% off Outsite coliving bookings.
All these organizations also put a lot of emphasis on their communities that they build through networking events, training programs, or joint workshops, among other things. But if you’re interested in joining an even more tightly-knit community, where people travel to the same destinations over a fixed period of time, you might want to check out the following digital nomad groups.
Hacker Paradise
Hacker Paradise is a community designed “with an ambitious program of location-based events, professional learning, and personal development, combined with amazing work, travel, and living experiences”.
Hacker Paradise offers two locations at all times all over the world, including Thailand, Italy, Bali, Kenya, Portugal, and Greece, just to name a few. Depending on the location, early bird pricing starts at around 1,100 USD/month for shared rooms – which are located, for example, in brand new, posh apartments (Buenos Aires, October 2020) or hotel rooms with daily buffet breakfast (Rio de Janeiro, Feb 2021).
What makes Hacker Paradise unique are their “themed programs”, tailored to the respective location. This includes opportunities for local networking events, as well as local influencer talks and meetups. A great example is the Rio retreat in February 2021 – for Carnaval season, Hacker Paradise snagged tickets for the entire group, including a private van, for the world-acclaimed Samba School’s competition held yearly at the Sambódromo.
Remote Year
Anybody living the digital nomad lifestyle has heard of Remote Year, one of the very first remote worker travel groups. Remote Year offers a variety of programs ranging from one to twelve months of travel between digital nomad hubs, including Europe, Asia, South America, and even Africa.
Starting at 2,000 USD/month, Remote Year is one of the more expensive options for traveling coliving and coworking groups – but that price includes travel booking, transportation, 24/7 workspace access to your personal coworking space, private rooms, and three fully organized and paid-for weekend trips per month, among other things.
So, if you’re looking for a digital nomad group that organizes everything for you over the course of one to twelve months, Remote Year is the group for you.
Unsettled
Unsettled is a curated community that offers “co-created journeys that give you the time, space and (un)structure to break out of your routine, build new relationships, and discover new perspectives while growing personally and professionally”.
Before lockdown, you could join so-called “retreats” of one to four weeks, for example in Costa Rica, Bali, Colombia, South Africa, Argentina, and Nicaragua – and that’s where they’re planning to start things up again in July.
But they’ve also been catering to their members during lockdowns with their Unsettled Lifestyle Incubator, a four-week virtual retreat to challenge people to find clarity on what’s next; and their Mastermind Community, an experiment in virtual community building “designed to bring a global community to your doorstep… at a time when you can’t leave it.”
So, if going remote is at the top of your lifestyle bucket list but you don’t yet exactly know how to make that switch, Unsettled might be exactly right for you.
WiFi Tribe
Well, of course we know the most about WiFi Tribe. We (usually) offer at least three, four- to six-week “Chapters” simultaneously in different locations and timezones all over the world – from Colombia to Kenya to Nepal.
Our members especially love the flexibility our chapters provide – you choose which months and locations to hop on and off at increasingly reduced subscription prices that include both shared and private rooms – as well as our tightly knit community culture that has remained strong throughout the coronavirus-induced lockdowns. Instead of on-site chapters, we’ve been running online chapters as well as online accelerators and incubators to help members get projects or even entire businesses off the ground during this time of self-isolation.
We carefully curate our community based on our own core values, which means that you’ll have instant friends who are respectful, humble, curious, passionate, and inclusive – just like you. A bunch of our members from Mexico to Australia are even weathering lockdowns together, which proves the strength of the bonds between our members.
If you want to be part of a super flexible, value-driven digital nomad community that sticks together even when we can’t be together, WiFi Tribe is the group for you.
And if you’re thinking about becoming a part of a community of digital nomads around the world, or if you’re just curious about what’s happening in it, join our weekly newsletter to get inside updates and meet the tribe!
