When I first heard about Caravanserai (the previous incarnation of Bruno's efforts), I was excited. Having helped get coworking started back in 2007 with Citizen Space, this seemed like the next logical progression, especially considering that coworking had been the logical extension of BarCamp (a hyper-local gathering for people of the internet).
This is like a global approach to satisfy that same desire to be part of a community of kindred spirits, but with the added benefit of (thanks to the internetification of work) being able to go anywhere in the world to do it.
I became an advisor to Roam after talking to Bruno about his plans and realizing that he was talking about a future world that I wanted to someday live in.
I have traveled the world and struggled to find suitable places to work. When I book AirBnbs, I'm commonly scouting them out for their suitability for work, or looking within their general vicinity for the same purpose. Furthermore, finding and meshing with a good sized local crew when traveling can prove challenging. This kind of co-living/coworking arrangement addresses those issue.
Roam comes in at a very interesting and transitional moment. While humans have never been more connected through technology, we still lack opportunities to truly live with each other and deepen the serendipitous connections that we've made.
Bruno and his team have been very thoughtful and considerate about the architecture and interior design of the space, in order to maximize the opportunities for connection and collaboration. He's thought carefully about the shape and duration of membership: what it entails, what it doesn't, and how long the right length of time for a "rotation" should be (long enough to melt into the local environment without staying so long that become permanent). He's also very tuned in creating the right balance of personalities and interests because this isn't a hotel where you're not meant to meet your neighbors. Indeed, it's quite the opposite, and that requires a good deal of social engineering and planning (for a good cause!).
Y'know, to draw a comparison, Periscope's tagline is, "Explore the world through someone else's eyes." But Roam answers the question differently. Roam isn't about seeing the world through someone else's eyes, it's about living in someone else's world, and to brush shoulders with others in a way that virtuality — so far — simply can't replace.
I hope that I someday get to live with Roam, but in the meantime am thrilled that this kind of opportunity will exist for other intrepid spirits out there.
--
Decided to republish this on Medium!
@brunohaid@chrismessina its amazing how much innovation can be done around a concept as simple as booking or find space.
Roam seems to be gaining alot of traction in a short period of time and am yet to find out why.
@chrismessina As you mentioned, sometimes it’s really tough to find suitable place for work and live. I’ve experienced same problems with Airbnb till I came to Portugal where one of my friends pointed me to SurfOffice, kind of co-working space and co-living with freelancers around the world. Roam now looks definitely promising for Asia and I hope to see it in more countries soon!
@terencepua hey @terencepua! I mean, the closest thing to Roam that came from Citizen Space was the global coworking movement — that we made it an open source community from the outset, and made our intentions very clear. We wanted people around the world to take the idea, adopt it, modify it, and so on. And they did!
That approach is markedly different from Roam's in the sense that Roam seeks to offer a more uniform and consistent set of locations and spaces, available via one centrally managed membership. Had we franchised or opened up a network of Citizen Spaces (a la WeWork) then maybe there would have been more connection there — but we opted for the pieces-loosely-joined network model.
Report
Is there only one place right now?
In that case, I think it's a bit difficult to advertise it as a "global co-living subscription", but whenever you have multiple places I think the concept will rock.
@sillaspoulsen Mom told us to start somewhere...
Thanks! Miami is coming in April (but please don't tell anyone) and the pipeline of further locations looks quite nice.
@sillaspoulsen imagine that part of your MVP is to scout, renovate, program, and design a space suitable for live-work, and then recruit ~40 brave souls to give up their familiar life and join you (Survivor-style) in a completely new, never-been-tried, live-work situation.
How might you approach it? :)
Report
Hi, @chrismessina
I would partner up with places in a region, let's say south east asia, where it's relatively cheap to rent a room at all ready existing hotels/places, and then saturate a region rather than spreading it out.
The places might not cost the same for Roam to book, but they know the exact limit of how much they can pay per night to the hotel, since they have a fixed price on 1600$, so then i would just start attacking all the places hotels in the specific region that fits the criteria for Roam.
Thats how I would do it :)
@sillaspoulsen interesting. That greatly limits the appeal of membership though, which is predicated on moving around the world every six months, not all over one region...
@mmt
Additional Note: Band's like Metallica can use this great product to go on tour!
In fact this product should be promoted to/for various types of tours!
-examples include:
musical festival tours (fans/employees)/
carnival tours(employees)/
sports team tours (season ticket holding fans)/
tourist cross-country road trips/
etc..
I hope this helps!
Thanks,
Jaswinder Brar
@danr_4 when you try to book, it says 1600$ per month.
Report
@onatcer@danr_4 I love the concept, but unfortunately that's quite expensive for only Ubud. There will be much more value when there are more locations. You can currently rent an entire property to yourself in Ubud for ~$600/month (if you're willing to commit to a long term rental).
After meeting with the Bruno in Bali, I had the pleasure of working with the Roam team on a few landing pages. Kudos on the launch @brunohaid and Roam team - this is definitely the future. :-)
Awesome product. Remote work and location independence is picking up speed very rapidly. In the future people won’t be quitting their job to become location independent, it will be their job from the start. 60% of the Mozilla team are remote. BuzzFeed is 50% remote. Some companies like Buffer have even taken the plunge to become 100% remote or “fully distributed”. Hello new world.
@ggeorgiev Very true. I started @redbutler in 2005, 90% of our team is remote all based in the US. But it hadn't occurred to me to work + locate remotely. We're going back in time. Noamds reading hieroglyphic emjois = Awesome. Congrats Roamers.
Report
This looks great. Sweet domain too 👌
I plan to be nomadic for a bit within the next couple years, so will definitely check this out then.
Great work @brunohaid@kimmaicutler@sushimako 🙌
Replies
Raycast
Roam
Bobby
doVibe
Mockuuups
Raycast
Roam
Raycast
Raycast
hiring tool
Raycast
Teleport
Old Twitter Cards
DrivePower
Roam
Perspective Cards
Betahaus Camps
Sell Button