The San Francisco Chronicle has a nice piece called Where neo-nomads' ideas percolate, that explains how "New 'bedouins' transform a laptop, cell phone and coffeehouse into their office".
"The San Francisco coffeehouse is the new Palo Alto garage," declares Kevin Burton, 30, who runs his Internet startup Tailrank without renting offices. "It's where all the innovation is happening."
Burton and Kennedy are among those popularizing the bedouin name, separating the movement from traditional freelancing by stressing the workers' involvement in technology, in general, and Web 2.0 ideology in particular. While the movement is at its apex in San Francisco, where young urban independents can easily find a coffeehouse with the right vibe for them, it's also happening across the more suburban reaches of the Bay Area, and across the country as a whole.
A year ago here (Thursday February 23 2006) I published a graphic Recipe for going Bedouin in response to posts by Greg Olsen (Going Bedouin) and Jackson West (The New Office Space). The idea has plenty of traction but the term never took off.
The people who do this sort of thing probably don't fit the corporate "road warrior" model, so it would be nice to have a better name for it. But is there one?
