Going Bedouin

Its seems that not everyone is happy with the traditional arrangement of working. We've had tele-working for a number of years now, and it seems that the next stage is making the company itself less fixed to the group. Here we have the idea of a nomadic business, that is a business with no permanently fixed location and one where all the members are not necessarily all in the same place all the time.

This approach extols the idea of using VOIP (Skype, Vonage), e-mail (Hotmail etc) and cellular technology to maintain your interpersonal links (hiring a POBox for all that snail mail too).

I must admit I like the idea of a "Bedouin" company, and in many respects it mirrors many of the relationships that I have nowadays. Simultaneously the world is becoming both more and less disconnected: the friends from University that live in the Channel Islands you get e-mails from or the Aunt in the Far East who can use Skype, your guild mates in USA, Denmark and Japan, and the collegue in the next city who you IM. All forming a "tribe" of people who aren't together but are.

Cory Doctorow had the right idea in Eastern Standard Tribe, we're connected together by timezones, interests and wires (well and wireless) not by physical location....mind blowing init?