How to create a digital nomad environment? Lessons from Italy’s Tursi community
Residents are hopeful the new incomers will breathe life into the sleepy old town
Basilicata is a stunning region of southern Italy that is still mostly unknown to both Italians and tourists. It is home to Tursi Digital Nomads, a local co-working environment.
The members of the community enjoy working in elegant rooms and enjoy coffee breaks on the terrace while looking down into the lush valley below.
Tursi ticks a lot of boxes for being a digital nomad village. It is a beautiful old borgo tucked in a scenic rural environment. It is off the beaten path so there are fewer visitors and more genuine people. The township has also set up a lovely co-working facility that is ready to use.
The community is supportive of the endeavour. Residents of Tursi think distant workers can revitalise the sleepy old town of the area.
What we can learn from the digital nomad project in Tursi
There are five important lessons for creating a community of digital nomads:
- Promote communications and exchanges: many digital nomads value an authentic experience as well as being surrounded by a global community. The key is to encourage interactions with the locals and their culture.
- Engage with the neighbourhood: the project’s success is largely due to the solid ties developed with the neighbourhood residents and local businesses both before and after it began.
- Engage numerous stakeholders to achieve long-term success: it takes careful planning, long-term thinking, annd close cooperation with private players and local authority to build a long-term digital nomad community in a distant village with infrastructural issues.
- Forget about perfection: it’s challenging to establish digital nomad groups in isolated locations, and not everything will work out right away.
- People come first: the community and the people are what make a business successful.
