Greetings All

It’s been a while since we last connected — but Ageless Nomads is back and is gearing up to introduce some interesting and exciting material over the next little while.

If you have visited Ageless Nomads recently, you will have noticed that there have been a few changes made to the website recently. A new design, a tighter structure, some new articles — and this is just the beginning!!

If you haven’t visited Ageless Nomads recently, then please come and take a look.

Some of the new items that can be found at Ageless Nomads include:

Short videos, featuring:

1. Seth Godin speaking on the Value of Tribes, and on How the Publishing Industry is Changing;
2. Tim Ferriss discussing the 4 Hour Work Week and How to Start a Business;
3. Loic Le Meur from Seesmic speaking on Building Communities;
4. Laura Day on the Power of Intuition;
5. Words of Wisdom from Barbara Sher;
6. Martha Beck explaining how we can Unleash Our Inner Genius.

There is also an amazing vide0 called Crazy Little Thing Called Life by Garbandage — well worth watching

A couple of new articles have also been added to the Lifestyles Design Skills Section, and the Communication Skills Section.

New articles and videos focusing on helping you develop the skills needed to become an Ageless Nomad will be added to the Ageless Nomad website on a regular basis. So check us out and let me know what you think of the new Ageless Nomads site.

Cheers

Anne

Being a creative person is hard work, especially when your business depends on your being creative for extended periods of times and over an unending stream of projects. Add to this the effort required to keep up-to-date with constantly changing technologies, keep an eye on changing trends and client demands, as well as re-establishing yourself in new surroundings every few months.….and the potential for creativity blocks of various lengths and intensities seems almost inevitable.

What do you do when you find that the creative flow isn’t flowing as easily as it should?

One thing that you could do is to look at what creative individuals look for in a community or a city that they plan to settle into, and then plan to spend some time in those locations. Creative individuals, according to Richard Florida, look for communities or cities that offer “…abundant high-quality amenities and experiences, an openness to diversity of all kinds, and above all else the opportunity to validate their identities as creative people.” (The Rise of The Creative Class, page 218). For example, in Toronto there are a couple of ‘creative districts’, Queen Street West, Liberty Village, St. Lawrence Market area, The Beaches, and a few others, where creatives and creative entrepreneurs congregate.

This is great for creatives who want to settle into an area, but what does a creative that just wants to spend a few months in the area actually get out of being in a creative community instead of any other community?

For starters, you get to be surrounded by creative people and that energy that creative people seem to generate. Spending time in creative communities is like a professional attending a professional development conference. These professionals generally come away from professional development conferences feeling recharged and excited after having spent some time learning about what is new and upcoming in their field, discussing tends and opportunities with cohorts, commiserating with people who understand their field and speak their jargon.

Similar kinds of experiences can be gained when creative people spend time in creative communities. For example, if you are a graphic designer, look for an area in a city where a lot of graphic design firms are located. Spending a couple of hours a day in the local coffee shops, or pubs, or other gathering places, listening to conversations can give you the ‘water cooler conversations’ that you miss by working solo — information on new trends; gossip about clients and their demands — that kind of stuff. I always come away from spending time in the creative areas of Toronto feeling really creative — as if I had spent several days at a professional conference.

If you are an outgoing extrovert, then starting conversations with other creatives could result in potential business partners, potential clients, and a potentially expanded tribe. At the very least this contact with other creatives should re-validate your identity as a creative person.

How do you cope with keeping up with changing technologies, changing trends, and changing client needs while traveling — and maintain both your creativity and your sanity??

TTFN

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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 Website located at http://www.locationindependentcom

TTFN

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If you enjoyed reading this post, maybe you’d like to subscribe to our RSS feed, or subscribe via email (enter your email address in the box at the top of the page, on the right) so you don’t miss any future posts. Thank you for visiting!