If you want to learn about working from the road? Explore this blog. If you want to discover more about the RV and festival camping scene, visit RoadtripMojo. Either way, Enjoy the Ride!

The week in review: Ten days of tweets for Home Office Highway. It’s a great way to recap the trip…

1. I told the tweeps at the Disney Entrepreneur Center today about ‘florists’ going on line. Then USAToday sez, http://short.to/l5ds

2. Remember, people – Social Media is all about your consumer, listener, follower or friend. The good vibe you get in turn is just gravy

3. See? This is how you tweet via mobile – sharing ideas & observations

4. Wow! What a crowd at the Disney Entrepreneur Center! Gotta love biz owners eager to learn!

5. Folks at the Disney entrepreneur center are about to get a dose of social media for small business. Remember: it’s about them, not you. Read More »

Hey bud. Can you spare some wi-fi?

It’s the lament of any connected family, home office worker or teleworker who hits the road: Dad has a broadband wireless card for HIS laptop, leaving Mom and the kids disconnected with their iTouches or Nintendo DSis, and eagerly awaiting the call, “Who’s next…?”

No longer. Verizon Wireless will introduce its Novatel Wireless MiFi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot on May 17.  The device enables customers to create a personal Wi-Fi cloud capable of sharing high-speed Internet connectivity of Verizon’s 3G Mobile Broadband network with up to five Wi-Fi-enabled devices such as notebooks, netbooks, cameras, gaming devices or portable media/MP3 players. Read More »

In the hunt for flexibility, mobility, cost savings and untethered workers, corporations are searching for the tools to drive their organizations to the leading edge.

Such services — VoIP, wireless broadband Internet access and full-featured phones, to name a few — comprise integrated solutions that enable employees to work anytime and anyplace.

That can be for a home office worker, a remote teleworker, even road warriors working from a corporate sedan — or an RV.

And companies are responding at a time when telework and remote officing continues to grow in popularity. Telework, or the use of telecommunications to enable employees to work from almost anywhere, is becoming a popular counter to rising real estate costs, worker mobility and fuel prices. HR association WorldatWork reports that the total number of U.S. teleworkers — from employees to contractors and even business owners — has risen 17 percent, from 28.7 million in 2006 to 33.7 million in 2008.

“Mainstreaming telework will enable employers to control costs and provide the foundation for employment stability and future growth,” said Chuck Wilsker, president of The Telework Coalition. The volume of  employer inquiries his organization receives has tripled in the past two years. Read More »

Our home office road trip up the Eastern Seaboard was made possible by a few things — an RV, my laptop, my wireless phone, and my broadband access service.

But was the last element even necessary?

Many teleworkers and road warriors already know this: If you’ve got a smartphone, you have Web access. With a USB cable and a piece of software, you can tether your laptop and surf with freedom.

Read Peter Wayner’s NYTimes review. Then, read your service agreement. With a simple download, and possibly a monthly fee, you might no longer need Wi-fi, a wireless broadband card, or much more than you already have in hand to access the Internet. And frankly, it’ll be safer than surfing in a public Wi-fi location, where snoops and other malcontents are perpetually seeking new laptops to ferret their way into.

Check it out. Then log on…

When we decided to take an extended vacation this summer — and divide my attention between work and pleasure, my goal was to work somewhere between 30 to 50 percent of the time.

That’s not to say I’d be working 10am until 2pm, and leaving the shoulders to pleasure (or vice versa). Given my circadian rhythm and generally accepted lousy sleep habits, it’s more likely that I would awaken around 5am, work for four hours or so, then hang with the family for the day. By evening, I’d be back on the PC as everyone else settled into reading the library of books we brought along, or watching a little cable TV or DVDs.

The tally of my output, if measured by dollars, was pretty close to on-target. I ended up billing about 35% of what I otherwise would bill during a normal three-week period. So I didn’t scuttle my ship, as was my most pressing concern. And I was able to keep my billable house in order.

But what else did I learn about remote finances…? Read More »

I’m sitting at my kitchen counter, HP laptop powered up, and pondering what we just completed.

Home Office Highway was an unbelievable exercise, in freedom, family, adventure, escape, work / life balance (and then some), technology and the power tools that empower the remote worker, personalities, workstyles, and what it takes to get all these concepts to meet up on the same page.

I have no doubt that we’ll do this again. I’ve spoken with my partners, and the interest is there. My clients were buoyed by the concept, and for the most part, were none the wiser — or at least didn’t seem to mind — that I was working from Lord knows where.

To be sure, there’s some balancing that needs working out. A few thoughts in retrospect… Read More »

Email’s important to me. I wouldn’t say I live and die by the stuff, or need it as much as air, water and bread.  But when I’m on the road for three weeks, it’s a close fourth. It was pretty important that I received my email messages while on home office highway. Just look a the places I went with my data device in tow (then imagine being my wife or kids — especially with that turkey leg shoved in my mouth)…