WASHINGTON -- — Frank Gruber's workstation at AOL in Dulles, Va., could be in any cubicle farm from here to Bangalore -- pushpin board for reminders, computer on Formica desk, stifling fluorescent lighting. It's so drab, there's nothing more to say about it, which is why the odds of finding Gruber there are slim.
Instead, Gruber often works at the Tryst coffeehouse in the Adams Morgan neighborhood here, at Liberty Tavern in nearby suburban Clarendon, Va., at a Starbucks, in hotel lobbies, at the Library of Congress, on the Bolt Bus to New York or, as he did last week, beside the rooftop pool of the Hilton on D.C.'s Embassy Row. Gruber and Web entrepreneur Jen Consalvo turned up late one morning, opened their Mac laptops, connected to WiFi and began working. A few feet away, the pool's water shimmered like hand-blown glass.
"I like the breeze," Consalvo said, working all the while.
Gruber and Consalvo are digital nomads. They work -- clad in shorts, T-shirts and sandals -- wherever they find a wireless Web connection to reach their colleagues via instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook or e-mail and occasionally by voice on their iPhones or Skype. As digital nomads, experts say, they represent a natural evolution in telecommuting. The Internet lets millions of people work from home; now, with widespread WiFi, many have cut the wires and left home (or the dreary office) to work where they please -- especially around other people, even total strangers.
For nomads, the benefits are both primitive and practical.
Primitive: Tom Folkes, an artificial-intelligence programmer, worked last week at the Java Shack in Arlington County, Va., because he's "an extrovert working on introvert tasks. If I'm working at home by myself, I am really hating life. I need people." He has a coffee shop rotation. "I spread my business around," he said.
Practical: Marilyn Moysey, an employee of Ezenia Inc. who sells virtual collaboration software, often works at a Panera Bread cafe near her home in Alexandria, Va., not at her office in the "boondocks." Why? "Because there is no hope for the road system around here," she said. Asked where her co-workers were, Moysey said, "I don't know, because it doesn't matter anymore."
Nomad life is already evolving. Those who want co-workers gather in public places or at the homes of strangers. They work laptop-by-laptop, exchanging both business advice and idle chitchat with people who all work for different companies. The gatherings are called jellies, after a bowl of jelly beans the creators were eating when they came up with the name.
