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I spent a good year trying to develop a website to answer this question and collect responses from people who'd done just this to try to aggregate their qualita

I spent a good year trying to develop a website to answer this question and collect responses from people who'd done just this to try to aggregate their qualitative and quantitative experiences, before ultimately realizing this is something where you can sort of point out some of the obvious trade-offs but the value system and preferences of the individuals vary so much that unfortunately the only way to really determine it is for the person in question to go live there. And so I stopped working on the site and just got a one way ticket and spent a year remote working. Before realizing that for me at that stage in my life the best place for me ironically was the country where I started, just in a bigger city with a good metro system. If you wanna determine this you'd be best off constructing a matrix of priority systems (weather, cost of living, language, broad cultural region a la northern european, southern european/latin, east asian, latin american, etc), nature in the area, etc) and make a tool for an individual to rank their priorities in terms of categories/factors, then rank the options _within_ each of those categories/factors, and then try to score the results for them. But even then, people often don't know what they want or care about until they've experienced a variety of places.

anm89 5y ago
Hey I would be very interested in touching base with you to hear what you learned in your research as I'm working on opening up a coliving space at the moment. Please reach out to the email in my profile if you are open to it. Thanks Andrew
- ganeshkrishnan 5y ago
  Not OP but as a hobby I created and ran one of the most active backpacking/nomad group on fb and also a site wikinomad. FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AussieBackpacking https://www.facebook.com/groups/AussieBackpacking The major issues with creating a one size fit all site is the bureaucracy of visas/immigration that depends on the user's location/passport/country of birth etc. Then, it's hard to run a business from a different country. Its easier to visit as tourist but running a business is extra complicated. If you have remote teams, timezones are major pain. Apart from that the best place I found was Hawaii & Toronto. Australia is also really first class with free public amenities everywhere.
  - trompetenaccoun 5y ago
    People are also very different. I personally would never move to Toronto. A friend of mine categorically doesn't want to go to Asia. Doesn't seem to like (or know?) the culture for reasons I don't understand. Also the most miserable thing are those expats that move somewhere with a head full of stereotypes, only to be disappointed by the reality of what it's actually like. Their negative attitude then keeps them from connecting with the culture of the place, so it's a vicious circle and only gets worse over time. Every country has immigrants like that and they're toxic to be around. You want to avoid becoming a complexpat at all cost. Like you say there's a lot of stuff to consider. Just like when someone asks which is the best city to live in - that's impossible to answer because it depends. The best way to find out is simply packing up your things and living in a foreign country for a bit. If you like you can make plans to stay and settle there, if not move on and try a different place. Think about it like marriage. You wouldn't marry someone you only know online and never met in real life, right?
magicroot75 5y ago
Seems like you're just lacking robust statistical analysis. Survey 10,000 digital nomads on personality traits, where they have/haven't enjoyed, and then do factor analysis to identify buckets of digital nomad "types". It's extraordinarily unlikely that "every person needs to find out for themselves by trying a bunch of places." Use similar questionnnaire to identify which nomad "type" the user is. Recommend them cities using a bayesian adjusting system. Figuring out how many digital nomads "types" there are will take a while and be tricky. But I don't think this is an intractable problem.

anm89 5y ago

Hey I would be very interested in touching base with you to hear what you learned in your research as I'm working on opening up a coliving space at the moment. Please reach out to the email in my profile if you are open to it. Thanks Andrew

ganeshkrishnan 5y ago
Not OP but as a hobby I created and ran one of the most active backpacking/nomad group on fb and also a site wikinomad. FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AussieBackpacking https://www.facebook.com/groups/AussieBackpacking The major issues with creating a one size fit all site is the bureaucracy of visas/immigration that depends on the user's location/passport/country of birth etc. Then, it's hard to run a business from a different country. Its easier to visit as tourist but running a business is extra complicated. If you have remote teams, timezones are major pain. Apart from that the best place I found was Hawaii & Toronto. Australia is also really first class with free public amenities everywhere.
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago
  People are also very different. I personally would never move to Toronto. A friend of mine categorically doesn't want to go to Asia. Doesn't seem to like (or know?) the culture for reasons I don't understand. Also the most miserable thing are those expats that move somewhere with a head full of stereotypes, only to be disappointed by the reality of what it's actually like. Their negative attitude then keeps them from connecting with the culture of the place, so it's a vicious circle and only gets worse over time. Every country has immigrants like that and they're toxic to be around. You want to avoid becoming a complexpat at all cost. Like you say there's a lot of stuff to consider. Just like when someone asks which is the best city to live in - that's impossible to answer because it depends. The best way to find out is simply packing up your things and living in a foreign country for a bit. If you like you can make plans to stay and settle there, if not move on and try a different place. Think about it like marriage. You wouldn't marry someone you only know online and never met in real life, right?

magicroot75 5y ago

Seems like you're just lacking robust statistical analysis. Survey 10,000 digital nomads on personality traits, where they have/haven't enjoyed, and then do factor analysis to identify buckets of digital nomad "types". It's extraordinarily unlikely that "every person needs to find out for themselves by trying a bunch of places." Use similar questionnnaire to identify which nomad "type" the user is. Recommend them cities using a bayesian adjusting system. Figuring out how many digital nomads "types" there are will take a while and be tricky. But I don't think this is an intractable problem.