Here's a preview of the remote work news we are covering this week:
- 🇧🇷🏝Talking with Gonçalo Hall about Brazil's new nomad village
- 📘📝Our new book: How to Be a Digital Nomad and Work Wherever You Want
- 🚐🛣Wi-fi nomads join retired nomads out on the road
This is the Remotely Serious Newsletter — Summer Edition.
It’s the remote work newsletter from Remotely Serious, written by Curtis Duggan.
🇧🇷🏝Talking with Gonçalo Hall about Brazil's new nomad village
Madeira, Portugal, has been the site of a fruitful experiment in remote-friendly living for a year and a half. In the town of Ponta Do Sol on the island of Madeira, a pre-planned, intentional remote work community for digital nomads was created and has been growing and thriving through the pandemic era.
Madeira is a Portuguese island located off the coast of Africa with a unique climate. It is geographically isolated but has direct flights to Portugal, the rest of Europe, and the Americas.
Gonçalo Hall is the mastermind behind the Madeira digital nomad village, another nomad village in Cabo Verde, Africa, and now a newly announced Brazilian village in the town of Pipa.
Here are some of the details:
- The first phase of the Pipa nomad village is a trial run from November 2022 to April 2023
- Nomads from around the world will be invited to live there
- If the trial run is deemed economically and socially successful by local municipal and regional partners, the village will become permanent
While this is not a real estate development (the 'village' is simply an aggregation of existing accommodations and resources), if it works out like other nomad projects, it could bring millions of dollars in economic activity to the region with 6-12 months.
I asked Gonçalo some further questions via Twitter:
Curtis: What is the expected ratio of Brazilian nomads vs. world nomads going to be in this village?
Gonçalo: Ratio of nomads: We want 50/50 in the first year, but no idea of what will happen as it's our first project in Brazil and South America. It's true that the internal market is huge, but our community is very global, so I think it will be interesting to see what happens.
What is the legal structure for working in Brazil as a foreigner? Are you suggesting people use a nomad visa or just wink-wink, don't ask, don't tell if under 90 days?
The ninety-day tourist visa will be what most nomads will use. The reason for this is that nomad visas [like the new one in Brazil] are not actually targeting nomads but remote workers. The Brazilian nomad visa is not an exception. There's a green area where if you don't work for Brazilian companies, you are actually legal, so we are using that legal frame for this community.
We still need proper nomad visas for 3-6 months, that actually solve the legal grey area of nomad visas.
Why is the village pilot ending in April? What happens after?
All our village projects have a timeframe for ending, as they are tests. When we don't know the [potential] acceptance and success. We need to test, so a pilot program is useful for that.
The continuation of the project is on the government side, if they want to keep supporting the project we are happy to continue, as I believe Pipa is a special place — like Ponta do Sol — our first nomad village is. My belief is that we will be successful and the project will continue, but having an end date to the pilot helps us manage the project and expectations.
Gonçalo also noted: The first village in Madeira was from Feb 1st 2021 to June 30th. But we are still here :)
(I noted that Gonçalo, like many digital nomad advocates, makes a clear distinction between the subculture of short-term 'digital nomads' vs. long-term 'remote workers'.
Digital nomads often claim that long-stay remote work visas should not be credibly called 'nomad visas' because they are not flexible enough. -Curtis)
Our new book: How To Be a Digital Nomad and Work Wherever You Want
We released our new book, How To Be a Digital Nomad and Work Wherever You Want!
An introductory book-length overview of workations, remote work, and the digital nomad lifestyle.
📝Planning a trip
🤔Adapting to local cultures
🌴Destinations that are right for remote workers
⛑Safety
🥙Food
📄Visas
🚴🏽Community
😎Strategy
...and more.
A special thanks to everyone in the remote work and digital nomad communities for contributing so much knowledge to the book — I hope it can help entertain, educate, and inform even more people about the location-independent lifestyle!
🚐🛣 Wi-fi nomads join retired nomads out on the road
A story from Australia's ABC News highlights a different genre of nomad culture: RV life or #vanlife.
In the thousands, people are turning to well-equipped, comfortable, Internet-enabled recreational vehicles to live and work on the road.
The article highlights how this kind of lifestyle has usually been reserved for retired folks who have saved up enough for a vehicle and have been taking RV adventures in the context of retirement or vacation.
The boomers are now being joined by a new generation of RV travelers who are not waiting for retirement to hit the road. With remote jobs and more wi-fi availability in out-of-the-way places, there is a viable path to working and living from the road for people of any age.
And SpaceX continues to launch more satellites — covering more of the Earth with satellite Internet, beamed down from the heavens. There are more and more opportunities to work from the road and extremely rural areas.
With house prices through the roof in North America, Australia, and elsewhere, this trend could get very popular in countries with pleasant weather and rural infrastructure.
Remote Work News from Around the Internet
Countries seek digital nomads who will be invested in local communities.
How Atlassian embraced remote work forever.
Remote work home décor trends.
Workers still love remote work, despite what their bosses think.
That's all for this week! See you next week!
