Nomad’s tend to be a very solitary group of people. There is no official Nomad’s Club where nomads can meet and exchange ideas, brainstorm solutions to business issues or lifestyle issues, and talk about life on the road.

Oh, there are professional associations where you can discuss professional issues, and meet other professionals either for monthly meetings, or during an annual professional’s conference. But nomads and location independent professionals tend to live either in remote areas or are relatively transient, so monthly meetings and annual conferences tend not to become part of their “To Do List”. However, having a group that shares a common mindset and can offer you support is not a bad idea. Today’s modern nomads can easily become members of today’s modern tribes.

A Second Life gathering of a Tribes party. source: retinafunk, Flickr, Creative Commons

According to Seth Godin, author of the book Tribes, “A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea.” (p.1) So members of a tribe share a common interest or a common lifestyle ideal (like being a nomad or location independent professional), and share a way to communicate or be connected (like a forum, or a space in Second Life), and have collected around a leader (typically a change agent). There is much more to Tribes than this, issues like leadership and social change are important parts of Tribes, but more on those will be written in a future post.

For now, the important aspect of becoming a part of a Tribe is that they can play an important role in the success of any new virtual enterprise, or unconventional lifestyle – if you can find and connect to an appropriate tribe. Not a ‘good enough’ tribe, but a full-on appropriate tribe.

Finding a ‘full-on appropriate’ tribe takes a bit of looking. For example, I could look for a tribe that has developed around the idea of the impact that baby boomers are having on society, but that tribe wouldn’t be appropriate because a major issue that is important to me is the location independent lifestyle design integration of work and life. Or I could look for a tribe that has developed around the idea of the location independence lifestyle design integration of work and life, but doesn’t provide any focus on issues related to 50+ age groups. I could either make do with one or other of these tribes and try to integrate the issues that are missing, or I could begin to develop a tribe that integrates all aspects of what I am looking for and see what develops around me.

From a ‘full-on’ appropriate tribe, I should be able to obtain:

• support for the lifestyle, ideal, issue, that is important to me;
• feedback on how to do what I want to do;
• educational information on the common interest that connects the tribe; and
• a feeling of belonging to a community.

For anyone interested in connecting with a tribe of modern nomads/location independent professionals, check out:

• the Location Independent Clubhouse located at http://www.locationindependentclub.ning.com
• ning.com, http://www.ning.com,  for other communities/tribes that might also be appropriate for you. This is also a great community in which you could develop your own virtual tribe.

TTFN

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