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Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

tynan.com

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Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#51
post #24
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm gently surprised SO hasn't done a 6 month torrent of a stand-alone locally searchable SO. They could possibly do a monthly subscription download? That'd help the people wanting to turn off the Internet. EDIT: And, if you really need it, you can get Internet on a ship. It's hideously expensive, but that's okay. You just need to think before going online.

We release an XML data dump every 3 months. It'd only be a bit of work to make it presentable and load it into something searchable. http://www.clearbits.net/creators/146-stack-exchange-data-du...

Could it be converted into a ZIM?

http://www.openzim.org/wiki/Main_Page

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#52
post #5

I too work from a lot of different places, but I find that I absolutely need internet to be productive. Pulling a Gem for instance, or checking Stack Overflow. My favourite places to work are all-inclusive holiday resorts. Lanzarote and the Algarve most recently. Being all inclusive means there is no thought process in eating or drinking. Nor any need to shop, clean, cook. The most difficult thing is finding out what…

What kind of stuff do you work on where you need to pull gems so frequently? Why do people need so many external libraries?

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#53
Great post. Being new in my entrepreneurial career I'm just learning the pleasures of working from anywhere.

I live in San Diego, but a few weeks ago I drove up to NorCal to visit the parents. While there I attended Startup School in the bay area. The next week I flew to Boston and stayed with a friend in Cambridge and attended WordCamp Boston. I attended the Business of Software conference next and stayed at the Seaport Hotel. At the end of the conference I took the short ride to Cape Cod and stayed there for a week or so with some family. It was a little chilly this time of year, but with everyone gone during the day and the tourist season over I could really enjoy the beauty and eat at all of the great restaurants. It's incredibly peaceful. I even spent some time at the Chatham Bars Inn and worked from there...absolutely incredible.

By staying with friends and family and managing costs the whole few weeks probably cost around $1,000 including plane tickets. The most expensive thing was the three nights at the Seaport Hotel, which cost around $500 even though I split the room with someone. It would have been a lot more if my wife was with me since we would have wanted to do more.

So now I'm back in NorCal staying with my parents. I'll probably stay here through Thanksgiving then head back home to San Diego for the winter.

This lifestyle really is incredible. It'll be interesting to see how it works out when my wife and I have kids, I assume it'll be a pain in the ass. I can't believe I had a 'real' job for so long. Sure I work about 2x as much, but I love it. Besides, it's really only work if you'd rather be doing something else.

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#54
Having been of a few cruises, I'd like to point out a few things:

1) Listed prices generally DO NOT include gratuities. Low level cruise employees like the cleaning crew, cabin stewards, waiters, cooks, etc. are paid ridiculously low wages, because cruise ships are registered to countries like Panama and the companies do not need to adhere to U.S. standards. I don't recall offhand, but for a 7-day cruise the "automatic" gratuity is, I believe, around $100 or so per person, so take that into consideration. You can remove the charge if you want to, but you'd have to be a pretty big asshole to do that :) Also, prices are based on double-occupancy, so if you go by yourself, double the fares.

2) Internet is expensive, slow, and charges by the minute). However, if you do this a lot, some cruise loyalty programs will give you free internet. I know Princess does this. Also, you're cell phone my work in certain locations. I'm a U.S. AT&T subscriber and I have full service in U.S. ports like San Juan and the U.S. Virgin Islands. If you can tether your phone, you'll get much faster and cheaper service that way than on the boat internet.

3) Don't get sick / injured. My wife stepped on broken glass while wearing open-toed shoes and got cut up pretty bad. The doctor on board used strips instead of stitches, and the cut reopened in two days, by which time we were already off the ship. The crew handled the incident terribly. The problem with the glass was not resolved quickly, my wife had to wait a fair amount of time for someone to show up with a wheelchair to take her to the doctor and the crew went into "don't get sued" mode really quickly. They gave us pushback when we refused to sign a liability waiver before getting treatment and we had some security guy who kept insisting to come into our room to photograph the shoes my wife was wearing at the time. When we complained the next day about the process, a nice woman sat down with us to hear out our complaint, but never really did anything. We were adamant about NOT paying for the care and it never showed up on our bill, so we let well enough alone. Three months later, they sent us a bill for $300 for the care. After we sent their HQ a letter in response, they ended up waiving the fee and giving us $100 credit towards our next cruise. Nice, but it was ridiculous in the first place since.

4) In regards to the above, had something worse happened, or they had refused to waive the fee, good luck fighting the cruise company in court. You're not only bound by typical consumer-crushing stuff like forced arbitration, but you're also getting into international legal difficulties. For big cases like the cruise that tipped over, it's worth the hassle, but for smaller claims, you're pretty limited in what you can realistically do.

All that said, I think this is a pretty cool idea and had always thought about how cruises could be a cool little work/vacation thing.

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#55
post #47

One 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 peo…

Where are keynotes or big talks held. I did not know ships had rooms where hundreds of people could listen to a presentatio. Do cruise ships have projctors/screens?

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#56
post #24
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm gently surprised SO hasn't done a 6 month torrent of a stand-alone locally searchable SO. They could possibly do a monthly subscription download? That'd help the people wanting to turn off the Internet. EDIT: And, if you really need it, you can get Internet on a ship. It's hideously expensive, but that's okay. You just need to think before going online.

We release an XML data dump every 3 months. It'd only be a bit of work to make it presentable and load it into something searchable. http://www.clearbits.net/creators/146-stack-exchange-data-du...

In fact, that work has already been done: http://stackapps.com/questions/3610/stackdump-an-offline-bro...

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#58

This is an insanely great idea. Cruise ships are incredibly quiet places. the lack of internet/expensive internet is a forcing function. Great way for co founders to spend time together if they're normally in different locations. We might just do this for a big push. Transatlantic cruises are very, very cheap and not crowded; and since it's not incredibly warm outside there's an added incentive to work. :) Another be…

Most of the repositioning cruises are in November or April, which probably won't work for any employees with kids in school. I don't think you could make this mandatory if you have any employees with kids.

If it's not mandatory then you're splitting your team up for 1-3 weeks.

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#59
post #5

I too work from a lot of different places, but I find that I absolutely need internet to be productive. Pulling a Gem for instance, or checking Stack Overflow. My favourite places to work are all-inclusive holiday resorts. Lanzarote and the Algarve most recently. Being all inclusive means there is no thought process in eating or drinking. Nor any need to shop, clean, cook. The most difficult thing is finding out what…

As the article mentions, there is internet, it's just expensive. And big downloads can be done at an internet cafe in port.

Re: Why Cruise Ships are My Favorite Remote Work Location

#60
If somebody is blogging about their lifestyle you have to question it. Creative geniuses seem to vary in their response to distractions. Leonhard Euler claimed that he did important work with baby on knee. The inventor of the shape sorter (I forget his name) used to head off to a place of absolute quiet and stillness to conceive his inventions. John von Neumann turned the TV volume up in order to work. Go figure
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