At WWD, we’re firmly convinced that you can work anywhere: rural, urban, on a plane, in a coffeeshop, and in many stranger places. But is everyone else out there as convinced as we are? A WWD reader writes to ask “How do you grow your business and manage your clients when you work/live miles away from the geographical hub that your target industry is in? ” For example, can a music-industry web worker make it outside of Nashville, Los Angeles, and New York? He reports discouragement from his own colleagues, who say “you’ll never do any business where you live. You have to live in the industry hubs to not only make it easier for your clients, but also to feel the buzz.”
While we’ve covered many ways to collaborate without being there, and the entire apparatus of social networks works well for picking up the “buzz” in many industries, the intangible and emotional factors of being perceived as out of touch can be harder to handle. So what do you do to stay a part of the action? Subscribe to more information sources? Attend more conferences? Schedule more business trips? Or is the pleasure of web work just worth the tradeoff of being a bit out of the center of things? Share your strategies and successes below!
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