Home Office Highway, a Digital Adventure that reveals how to workation from the open road, will travel from Florida to Chicago in Summer 2009.

The Midwest saw 6.7 million travelers last summer. In ‘09, travelers will see the tools needed to transform a hotel, lake house, sedan, minivan - or RV - into a perfect workplace for the home officer, road warrior, teleworker or parent. Check back often to learn more!

Vocation meets Vacation on HomeOfficeHighway!

_________________________________________________________

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)…

We’ve steered the ZRV south. We’re just inside North Carolina, at a KOA campground in Enfield. By tonight, we’ll be back in Florida, preparing for a presentation at the Disney Entrepreneur Center on Thursday morning. A lot of reflection going on right about now. Eighteen days on the road, and as a family, we’re still talking. Equally important, as far as this “home business exercise” goes, my clients still seem to be talking to me.

How has this happened? Credit understanding by my family and clients, and the tools I’ve used. I’ve said that Home Office Highway was NOT about some fancy technology that created a whiz-bang workspace. It’s been all about off-the-shelf stuff, easily accessible and priced right for anyone, that creates a workspace that mimics the home office.

What stuff have I used? Let’s go by the numbers… Read More »

I spent some time with Ruth King with The Profitability Channel in Atlanta as part of Home Office Highway. We had a great chat about setting up your mobile home office, getting work done - and managing family expectations. See for yourself. The 30-minute show that aired on July 21.

To check it out, hit www.profitabilitychannel.com, click on Channel Calendar or Library, go to July 21, and look for Jeff Zbar on Biz Buzz. It will be available through mid-August.

Enjoy…

I’ve been a fan of Henry David Thoreau for more than a decade. Didn’t read him in grade school or college. I came across his works and thinking later in life, and found a piece of him in me. Equal parts poet, essayist, biologist, ecologist, transcendentalist, anarchist, abolitionist and a creator of civil disobediance whose writings later were followed by Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, I believe any free spirited thinker can say they feel his work.

So it was when we were driving down I-495 in Central Massachusetts this week and came across a sign for the Walden Pond State Reservation, I knew I just had to stop.

I knew it would be an idyllic place, this campsite and woods that Thoreau spent two years, two months and two days in the 1840s exploring, journaling, and living a solitary life. I’d read some of his works, and while the details were a bit fuzzy, the big picture revealed a place I had to be.

“You’re going to see a lot of ‘earthy’ people,” I forewarned Robbie. “People in Birkenstocks and women in peasant skirts who still follow his writings.”

So Robbie, Nicole and I went. And we parked in a lot with far too many vehicles to be just members of The Thoreau Society. Whatever. We were all on the same plane.

And as I rounded a corner from the parking lot, I saw it… Read More »

During our recent visit to Jacksonville, Fla., Home Office Highway was profiled by First Coast News. Workation, vocation and vacation were key concepts the producers lit upon to highlight how the mobile home office will find its place.

See the report below…

Every other week, I sit and chat with Small Business Advocate Jim Blasingame. This week, I was sitting in the driver’s chair of the Home Office Highway RV while tooling down the Garden State Parkway (hand-free wireless, I promise…). It was a lot of fun.

Give it a click if you’d like to learn how to home office from the road, too, good buddy. And check out my weekly spot on The Rich Roffman Show. Hosted by Miami media entrepreneur and publisher Rich Roffman, we’ve chronicled my trip up the Eastern Seaboard — including my drive through New York’s Hudson Valley. We’ve proven that my work — or that of any information peddler — can be done from anywhere.

This is the Chief Home Officer, I’m 10-10 on the side…