Great work on the article and CruiseSheet.com. Could you update the "From" dropdown to combine "New York, New York" and "New York, NY"?
Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location
41–50 of 322 posts
Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location
#42In my humble opinion, this is a shitty idea. There are other quiet places with decent enough bandwidth that don't have the costs or risks of a cruise ship. My favorite one is the study section of the local library. I've also gone out to a cabin in the woods that only had a satellite link. My neighbor has soundproof walk-in closet. As for the risks of a cruise ship, if something goes wrong, your options are limited. I…
What things can go wrong on a cruise ship that are very bad for people onboard? Isn't a life boat just a short run away?
No power for 3-4 days.
Google "cruise ship no power", it happens more often than you'd think
That means
-no showers
- no toilets flushing.
- No internet
- no hot meals
Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
What things can go wrong on a cruise ship that are very bad for people onboard? Isn't a life boat just a short run away?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Concordia or if you're of a different age: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Titanic
2 incidents in 100 years, seems safe...
Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location
#44I can see how the lack of Internet is awesome for preventing you from checking Facebook / Twitter / HN all day. At the same time, I'm not sure how productive I could be without near-constant access to StackOverflow. :)
http://kapeli.com/dash
Feel like I've had my head in the sand. Dash is great - thanks
Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
What things can go wrong on a cruise ship that are very bad for people onboard? Isn't a life boat just a short run away?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Concordia or if you're of a different age: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Titanic
Things can also go wrong sleeping in your bed at night.
Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location
#46Interesting idea, but the lack of internet to look things up easily could be a headache. I suppose it would help if you already have expert-level knowledge in the tech stack that you're working in, and/or you can download local copies of lots of documentation.
I find that for myself, that when I work without Internet access, the boost I get from a lack of distractions usually cancels out the problems caused by inability to look things up. A lot of the time, having to figure out things that I would usually look up helps me to think more deeply about the problem at hand. Downloading a manual or two is often all I really need to be productive offline.
Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location
#47One of the academic conferences in my field has been on a cruise on and off [1], for some of these reasons. One of the main things people like about it is that it keeps everyone together: everyone eats in the same dining room, drinks at the same bars, and it's easy to meet up and split off into impromptu discussing/working groups somewhere. Whereas in a big city people tend to diffuse, partly by income (well-paid people go to different restaurants than grad students), partly by interest, partly by what part of the city they found a hotel in. Many people also like no-internet. No temptation to respond to work emails or check Facebook during talks! And finally, it means everyone has to come for the whole conference or none of it: no showing up for half the conference, or just for your keynote.
The cost is also surprisingly low, typically coming out less in total than a typical "big hotel" conference does: when you add up conference-room rental, catering for coffee breaks and lunch, cost of hotel rooms, restaurants for dinner, etc., the cruise ship's all-in group pricing typically ends up cheaper per person, sometimes substantially so.
The downsides:
1. It looks bad externally, like academics wasting taxpayer money on a boondoggle. Even if it's cheaper, the image is too luxurious. It looks better to have a conference at a Marriott in Chicago, even if that costs the taxpayers more. It looks bad enough that some people won't come, because their source of funds won't approve the trip.
2. Flipside of the community tightness aspect is that it can feel claustrophobic to be essentially stuck at the conference, literally unable to leave the floating conference hotel.
3. No internet means certain kinds of demos won't work, or need added preparation. Although this is good practice anyway, because conference-room internet is often flaky even on land.
4. Not being able to come for only part of the conference can also be a disadvantage, since the schedule is inflexible. If you have a hard conflict anywhere in the conference, you have to skip it, since there is no way to arrive half a day late, or leave even 2 hours early.
Last year we experimented with having it in a medium-sized town with a compact city center, in a lower-cost-of-living location [2], to try to get some of the advantages without the disadvantages. I think this worked fairly well, and I personally liked it more than the cruise ship. But there is an added travel disadvantage, because there are few compact towns that also have good international airports.
[2] Chania, Crete: http://www.fdg2013.org/attendees/
Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Already this is a trend, but for senior citizens. Many of them use cruise ships as retirement communities for nearly similar reasons. http://www.aplaceformom.com/blog/2013-2-2-cruise-ship-retire... "According to Dr. Lee Lindquist’s 2004 study comparing assisted living costs and benefits to those offered by cruise ships, “cruises were priced similarly to assisted living centers and were more efficacious.” Lindquist cl…
The hazards and medical care availability pointed out in the article (Good 'ol Cecil) seem to greatly outweigh any possible benefits.
I won't argue with you there, but it is a trend which was the subject of the parent.
Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location
#49Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if there's something I want to get done, and I have the time but I keep getting interrupted? I'll just go off somewhere with fewer distractions. That's what this is for.
I got the same impression from reading it as pastylegs did. To me, it sounded like the author does thing on the regular, as opposed to a one-off or rare type thing. If you have that much trouble creating a segmented space to work in your normal life, you either have too many distractions in your space, are too easily distracted, or have an unreasonable expectation of what it means to work.
Maybe they just enjoy working from a ship? The food, drink, sports and international travel are all attractive.