The Bansko Effect
When you can go anywhere, why follow the herd?
The Bansko Effect is the mainstreaming of smaller towns and cities far from the coast making the effort to attract remote workers and reshaping the cultural landscape for the modern professional, and the innovations that have allowed this to happen.
Hey reader,
This photo perfectly captures what remote work is NOT:
No one works on the beach. Ever. Never once have I seen this scene play out — even in Bali — despite all the stock images of digital nomads on the sand with their laptops.
Today’s essay looks into the heart of what Mountain Remote is: a community of independent thinkers who don’t follow the herd — even when that herd is going to the beach.
As we head into 2023, the stereotype of remote workers being a bunch of beach bums in search of the perfect Insta shot is officially dead. Rather, the location independence movement is about moving society forward, into an age with greater synarchy between work and life, staff and boss, contractor and client.
I’ve dubbed the killing of this stereotype The Bansko Effect. More on Bansko in the essay, but the reasoning for the name is that this small Bulgarian town is the first ski town to establish itself as a remote work hub. The above photo is not even possible anywhere in the vicinity. The Bansko Effect is the mainstreaming of towns — not major cities — far from the coast making the effort to attract remote workers and reshaping the cultural landscape for the modern professional.
From a US-centric angle, this could also be called The Tulsa Effect. Regardless, it took a global pandemic following years of tech innovation to bring the Effect to reality, and today’s essay covers those innovations and marks the death of the digital nomad stereotype.
For some pre-reading, I wrote about my experience moving from a major metro area (Denver) to a small town (Palisade) as a remote worker in 2019, and the perks and setbacks that have resulted, in this post.
Community Shoutouts
Welcome to all new subscribers since the past dispatch! I hope you like to think forward, because that’s all that happens here.
On the note of looking ahead, this week’s resource is a guide to help you understand how to take advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act to move towards a greener lifestyle — there’s never been a better time to buy an EV, a heat pump, or solar panels. Thanks, Clean Technica for putting this guide together. I realize this only helps those in the US, but for the rest, it’s an inspiring read, nonetheless.
On the No Blackout Dates podcast this week, we interviewed Marketa Daley, who along with her husband and three kids under 5, hiked 1,300 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. I mean, wow.
Now, let’s feel the Effect.
The Bansko Effect
In October 2018, I attended the 7in7 digital nomad conference in Medellín, Colombia. It was a fantastic gathering of people from across the globe, in a city that had become a central destination for remote workers. For me, it was an opportunity to bond with two of the people in my mastermind group — we rented an apartment together for a couple of weeks and, after meeting online biweekly for over two years, finally got to spend time together in person. The event also provided a chance to reconnect with travelers I’d met in places like Bali and Austin, Texas, but hadn’t seen in a while.
On the agenda were a number of meetups and sessions covering nearly every aspect of the remote work lifestyle — from global health insurance to mental health and even a fantastic presentation from Sam Matthew of Remote Year on whether remote workers are technically breaking the law by entering countries on a tourist visa, even if that law is rarely enforced (the answer was, “it depends, but generally, no”).
Many of the sessions ended following an inspiring discussion but without a firm conclusion. That’s because, in those cases, there generally wasn’t one — at that time, health insurance for digital nomads wasn’t really a thing, nor were digital nomad visas. The Covid-19 pandemic hadn’t happened yet and the world at large wasn’t nearly as familiar with remote work and location independence.
In my view, the lack of infrastructure for remote work at that time kept most of us corralled to a few primary scenarios:
Living in or bouncing between major cities with fast WiFi and vibrant culture, and if we were lucky, other people working remotely
Living in or bouncing between warm-weather destinations like Bali and Thailand where enterprising digital nomads had created infrastructure and community from scratch (often in the form of coworking spaces that doubled as community centers)
Working at home or in local coffee shops
In any case, living in Palisade, Colorado, or Bansko, Bulgaria, was a risky endeavor that could result in bad WiFi, no social life, and immense isolation.
How this has changed
While revisiting my notes from that conference recently, I realized that many of the problems discussed have since been solved (listed below, for the sake of providing resources here). But some remain, and from my view, one, in particular, is that the greater “digital nomad” movement continues to pigeonhole itself into the stereotype of a bunch of laptop warriors posting up on a beach somewhere tropical.
The truth is that, as a result of increased remote work infrastructure since the pandemic began, an increasing number of remote workers choose to live in small cities and towns. Seventeen percent of remote workers have left the town where their job is based, and small towns and cities are attracting a higher percentage of them each year due to their affordability, quality of life, and access to nature.
What’s more fascinating to me than the pure statistics is what has allowed this to happen. The biggest factor that draws remote workers to a place is amenities conducive to this lifestyle:
Fast WiFi
Cafes and coworking spaces to work from
A community of remote workers to socialize with that are easy to meet upon arrival
Easy to navigate (and affordable) home and rental listings
Culture and recreation
Work-life balance
More and more small destinations are getting behind initiatives to attract remote workers as a way to boost the local economy and create jobs. This is evidenced by landlocked locations that have successfully executed campaigns to lure remote workers. Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a prime example — Tulsa Remote, a program launched by the city to pay remote workers to move there — brought in its 2,000th remote worker in November. The program has brought more than $62 million to the local economy.
Tulsa is nowhere near the beach — or the mountains — but this program, combined with affordable housing and recent efforts by the city and business owners to boost its downtown social and dining scenes, is among the most successful remote work relocation incentive programs ever launched.
Things Tulsa had to overcome:
It’s far from the largest city in OK/northern Texas and has fewer cultural amenities than Oklahoma City or Dallas
As noted above, there is no beach
While Oklahoma is growing in population, it doesn’t benefit from the trendiness or innovative reputation of US cities like Portland, Boulder, or Austin. In a sense, it’s not a place where you hear people say, “I’ve planned for years to move here.”
Politically and socially, the state as a whole is anything but inviting for those with a mindset of progress and innovation
Still, the town made the effort to develop remote work infrastructure and coupled that with its bikeable and increasingly vibrant urban core to attract remote workers. The resulting effort has resulted in a better startup scene coupled with live music, dining, nightlife, and other cultural amenities — Rolling Stone even stated that Tulsa might be the next Austin.
For us mountain dwellers, the town of Bansko, Bulgaria, has single-handedly reshaped how the global remote work movement looks at 4-season destinations. Led by the innovative team behind Coworking Bansko, this small mountain town in the Pirin Mountains of western Bulgaria has become a hub for remote workers in Europe. Its biggest draws are obvious:
Skiing, hiking, camping, mountain biking, and other outdoor recreation
Natural beauty and a historic cobblestoned town center
An affordable cost of living compared to mountain towns in Switzerland, Austria, and elsewhere in Europe
It’s outside the Schengen visa zone, so travelers can use their Schengen time elsewhere and then head to Bulgaria to remain in Europe legally.
But off the cusp, Bansko seems an odd space for a digital nomad haven.
The closest airport is in Sofia, about 60 miles away
The closest beach is in Greece, or one must travel across Bulgaria to the Black Sea
The town’s population is about 13,000, with a large service sector economy. Historically, it hasn’t been a startup center.
But developments including wired internet, public transit and ride-sharing, and increased remote work acceptance in the tech, outdoor gear, digital-first lifestyle media, marketing, and other industries often populated by outdoors enthusiasts, alongside freelancing platforms like Upwork and the “influencer economy” on social media, have allowed towns that formerly housed local hospitality and seasonal workers to develop and maintain infrastructure for those with outside incomes.
I’d like to call attention to a few developments that I believe also further this trend:
In the US, a slow but steady shift in the public mindset about train and bus travel, as well as the #vanlife movement. The US, for instance, has not seen such a formal push for high-speed rail since before the interstate highway system was built. While much work is left to be done on all fronts here, the tide is shifting. Even globally. Intercity bus travel is currently the fastest-growing transportation sector in the US and has long been ubiquitous in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere, servicing far more destinations than airports at a much cheaper rate, though regional airports effectively fill some of the gaps.
Side note: During the summer of 2020 — peak Covid hysteria — I took a Greyhound bus for the first time. There was WiFi and an entertainment package (movies, TV, etc.) similar to what you’d find on a plane! And of course, that’s nothing compared to Bustang.
Increased activism and legislation surrounding making cities and towns more hospitable to people, rather than cars. The result is that, on a rolling basis, urban city centers and smaller towns are becoming better places to spend time in, therefore becoming more comfortable to new arrivals (including remote workers) trying to find their footing. And in many instances, there’s no need to have a car to arrive at or move around these places.
Better internet. In the US, the Rural Development Broadband Reconnect Program is bringing fiber internet to small towns and rural areas, including where I live in Palisade. Starlink and other satellite internet providers will further propel this into the future. In some places, it already is — the ski area near me, Powderhorn, is quite remote and has never had decent WiFi until this season, thanks to Starlink. Now, I can regularly make turns while popping in and out of the lodge to keep up to task. The Covid-19 pandemic undoubtedly sped up development on all fronts here.
The outdoor economy. Public interest in the conservation of nature has been on the rise since before the pandemic, and when nearly everyone was forced outside to socialize and recreate, that sentiment only grew. The Columbia Tribune reported last month that the current economic impact of the outdoors industry is $862 billion per year — just in the US — and being closer to the trailhead is obviously better than having to spend half the day commuting to it — or, not having a trailhead to go to at all.
The Mountain Remote community understands this as well as anyone — we build our lives around being able to recreate when and where we want, without having to sacrifice work, family, or anything else.
Tech and remote-first infrastructure problems that have been solved to make this possible
Health insurance: Progressive companies like SafetyWing have pioneered health insurance policies (not travel insurance policies) for global citizens and distributed companies whose workers don’t have a firm home base. While the majority of remote workers spend the bulk of their time in one place, myself included, this is a major, major breakthrough for the future of health insurance and for bringing the world closer together.
Digital nomad visas: 2021 and 2022 have seen the launch or update of nearly two dozen “digital nomad visas” from countries around the world including Portugal, Thailand, and others. This progress finally takes remote workers out of the grey area of being in a country on a tourist visa, while they are actually working full- or part-time. This is also a sign that federal governments are finally realizing the economic potential of the remote work revolution.
The present ubiquity of communications tools like Slack and Zoom, and project management tools like Asana and Notion, all of which keep workers connected and on-task no matter where they are around the globe.
Progress has happened in other areas as well, such as a growing acceptance of asynchronous work schedules.
Much like the discussions during the 2018 7in7 conference, The Bansko Effect is a work in progress. A large portion of the globe still lacks proper infrastructure for remote workers.
And of course, many people would simply rather go to the beach — and that’s just fine.
Mountain Remote news and further reading
I know I’ve included a lot of bonus reading in this one, but Forbes dove deep on how remote work can impact small-town life, in line with today’s essay.
Russia continues to look backward and isolate itself, announcing this week that it plans to ban remote work in many cases, partly appearing to be punishment for those who fled the draft into its immoral war.
That’s all for this week. See you next time!
I enjoyed this article and its perspective, and learned new terminology along the way. Thank you.