>> MAT: Hey Everyone!
In this video, we're going to talk about how we work online
while living in our camper van
and also when we're backpacking and travelling.
>> DANIELLE: We've been working online since 2014
and it's been really great.
It's allowed us all kinds of flexibility to travel when and where we want to.
But it hasn't always been easy, and we've had to find
solutions to all kinds of challenges along the way.
So in this video, we're going to talk about 7 aspects
of working online while travelling
that we've fine tuned over the years.
We're going to cover gear, WiFi, how we stay focussed
and comfortable.
We're also going to talk about security, backups, and power.
If you're thinking of travelling and working online
we think this video is going to be really helpful for you.
>> MAT: Before we get started, we just want to say
a quick thank you to NordVPN for sponsoring this video.
We'll give you more information about them later on.
So first up is gear.
We both have some pretty basic stuff
to be able to work online.
We each have a small portable laptop, we'll usually carry
a few hard drives with us, we have some pretty light and portable
mirrorless cameras.
And if we do buy something new, we try
to make sure it's the smallest and lightest version of that thing.
Having a simple and light setup also means that we're able
to carry the important stuff with us all the time.
For example, if we're taking the plane, we'll never check any
important electronic gear.
We'll never put a laptop in a checked suitcase.
So we'll have a small backpack and in there we'll put:
our laptops, maybe a hard drive, a camera, and just the essentials
that we can't afford to lose.
>> DANIELLE: When it comes to WiFi, that is probably one of the most
important things that we look for when we're travelling
and so we've relied a lot on free WiFi for the past few years.
We've done a lot of work in cafes, we also use public libraries quite a bit.
And sometimes what we'll do when we're in our camper van
is we'll go into either a restaurant or a cafe and order something,
we'll work there for a few hours,
but we don't like to take up too much space
so then we'll move into the camper van and we'll still be able
to access their WiFi from the parking lot.
So it's a little bit sneaky, we're kind of like friendly WiFi pirates
who still buy something but we don't necessarily want to
spend the whole day in that cafe or restaurant.
Sometimes it has been worth it for us to pay to work at a
co-working space, which is basically like a communal office space
that you can rent by the day, the week, or the month.
There's usually one in most major cities around the world.
Sometimes when we are on the move quite a lot and we're
moving from place to place almost every single day, or every week,
it can get stressful to always be finding a comfortable and affordable
place to go and sit and work, or to find free WiFi.
So a couple of things that we're looking at doing moving forward is
we're actually maybe going to get a cell phone.
It's been almost 7 years since we had one
but we might get a small data plan so that we can at least
access our emails from wherever we are.
We've also been looking at mobile internet plans, so basically you get
a small device that's not a cell phone.
It's a WiFi hotspot.
Kind of like a router that allows you to access internet while you travel.
Unfortunately for us, the mobile hotspot plans in Canada, they are available,
but they're just not affordable for us.
One last thing that we're also looking into is a WiFi range extender.
It's basically a device that amplifies WiFi signals so that
you can access them from further away.
>> MAT: Next up is focus.
We're often working in public spaces, in cafes,
places that are just pretty loud, noisy, and distracting.
So one thing that I find really helps me to stay focussed
is to use a pair of good noise cancelling headphones.
Right now I have this pair that a friend gave to me,
and it really helps just block out outside sounds.
Especially when I'm editing video and working on audio.
Staying comfortable while working on a laptop and moving around
is not always easy.
A laptop is inherently not very ergonomic.
And this isn't a big deal if we're just working a couple of hours here and there.
But if we're working long hours at the laptop, it can cause
some aches and pains.
In our camper van we had a bed with an adjustable back rest
so we could adjust our seating position.
And a good friend also gave us this portable lap table
that we've used a lot in the van.
It's pretty lightweight.
We can adjust it into all sorts of different angles
to get comfortable.
And that's been really nice for working
and also for watching movies while in the van.
When we're staying a bit longer somewhere, maybe we're house sitting,
or staying at a hotel or hostel for a longer period, sometimes
we set up a standing desk.
And I've actually been thinking
of maybe getting a small plug in keyboard and a mouse
to plug into the laptop so that we can raise the screen and be more comfortable.
But that would add weight and bulk to our gear so we haven't gone there yet.
>> DANIELLE: We do pretty much everything online
from our banking, all of our work, all of our correspondence.
And we're usually in public places using an unsecured WiFi connection.
Using an unsecured WiFi connection means that someone
who knows what they're doing could potentially access
some of your important information when you're connected.
Which for us is almost all the time.
So that started to worry us a little bit.
We've heard a couple of
horror stories about people having their laptops accessed
for different things.
We've heard of a YouTuber having his videos completely wiped from his channel.
So we kind of want to avoid that and protect ourselves a little bit more.
Last summer we looked into ways to do that and we learned about VPNs,
which stands for Virtual Private Network,
and it's basically a service that you can activate while you're browsing the web
that creates a secure network connection so that people can't access your information.
And it does it by hiding the IP address of your computer and using another one
from a server in your country, or in another country.
We started off using a free VPN service but it was really annoying
because they would make you wait in this kind of fake line up
for several minutes until it would let you log in
and we didn't really like it.
Recently NordVPN reached out to us to let us know about their service
and we looked into them and found out that they are one of the
best VPN services around.
They're also really affordable so we're excited to be using them as of now
and moving forward.
So we won't have to worry about
anyone accessing our passwords or our banking information.
A couple of other things that we really like about NordVPN
is that they don't log any of the data that you access
while you're using their service so no one is recording
the websites that you're going to or anything like that.
One last thing that's really cool is that you can actually go
into your account and see a map of the world,
and you can see all the different servers they have available.
And you can choose any of them to use as your IP address.
And so NordVPN has servers all around the world so you could have
your signal coming from Spain, or Albania, or South Africa.
It's up to you.
So if you're interested in travelling and working online,
or even if you just want to make sure that
your internet connection at home is secure,
NordVPN is offering our audience a discount, so you can get
77% off of their 3-year plan, which ends up being less than $3/month.
If you want to get this deal, you can go to NordVPN.com/exploringalternatives
and use our discount code, which is 'exploringalternatives'
We'll also add a link in the description in case you want to check it out.
>> MAT: For backups, we usually try to keep smaller documents
and spreadsheets in Google Drive, but we're also often working
with really large video files and unfortunately, we can't back those up
on the cloud, or on Dropbox or anything like that.
They're just way too big, and they take forever to upload.
So what we've been doing is that, for example, if we go film
an interview, right away we'll come back and back up that footage
on a small portable hard drive.
And we have two of those hard drives, and they're just duplicates of each other.
Another advantage of backing up our files like this is that there's
almost no data stored on our laptops.
So if something happens to them,
if they get stolen or we lose them,
we can always get a new laptop and start again.
>> DANIELLE: Lastly, we're going to talk about power.
And it might seem like an odd things to mention.
But if you've ever worked at a cafe with your laptop
and you haven't been right next to the plug, and you're slowly
watching your laptop's battery go down to 0%,
it can be really stressful.
Especially if you have a full workday ahead of you.
So what we usually do is, with our laptops we have the option
of a shorter or a longer cable.
So if we're travelling we almost always
have the longer option so that we can access more outlets from wherever we're sitting.
Another thing we've had to do, especially living in the camper van,
where it didn't automatically have outlets, is we installed a solar power system
so that we were able to charge our laptops and our other gear from the van.
One last thing to think about with power is that if you're travelling
to different countries, you'll want to have a universal power adaptor
so that you can adapt your plug to fit into whatever outlets are in the country you're
in.
We hope you found our tips and experience helpful.
If you're interested in working online as you travel,
but you haven't found online work yet, we made a separate video
with some tips for how to find online work, and we'll link to that video in the description
of the video.
Also, if you're interested in trying out NordVPN, you can visit their website,
which is www.NordVPN.com/exploring alternatives and you can
use our discount code, which is 'exploringalternatives' to get
that special deal we mentioned earlier.
We'll link to them in the description of the video as well.
Thank you so much for watching, and we'll see you in the next video :)