Please don't sell that startup from a beach dream on exoticism.

I would like to cast a diverging opinion from my personal experience. For various work-related reasons I left Europe in early 2008 to live in Martinique, in the French West Indies.

It is very close to what the article describes - tropical weather (you will never get cold - 25 C/ 77 F is what we call cold and take a jacket for - home weather station on http://guylhem.org - only the webcam is down ATM), great food (french creole! do I need to say more?), beautiful wildlife (It's 9:20pm I'm listening to the various frogs and birds and stuff), healthy lifestyle (can't be helped ! even if you have bad habits it is like something from the environment you are surrounded with contaminates you and make you follow an healthy lifestyle). Same currency (euro). No need for a passport.

Also you can swim every day of the year in the caribbean. Sounds like your dream ? I went swimming on new years eve like 2 years ago. Got sunburned.

That's the honeymoon, the first few weeks/month/years. Little by little I went to the beach less and less. At the moment maybe one every couple of month, to go with the gf.

Along the way I realized something : what was initially the selling points, as good as they may sound, place you at risk of isolation. And this may not always be good, especially for a techy - there seem to be more introverts among us. I would have called myself an introvert.

You know these things you call "distraction" and the people you do not call normal? That's what I dig now, whenever I go somewhere. I'd love to have a beer and talk about technical stuff with people who will understand me (running my website on my mips dsl modem, packaging a distro). Hitting the same 3 guys you know on the island who do free software quickly loses its novelty.

So for my last few vacations, I went to Florida, Montreal twice and Paris. Basically to a conference, a LUG meeting + visiting some friends, and a technical conference. While in Florida I was a bit bored (like home, only chilly, but with techies it was fun) so I also went to see an old friend in San Diego. Since there was a HN meeting we attended. It was like being alive again, being surrounded with people who share the same interests and the same cultural references. I was quite bored for weeks when I went back to my tropical paradise - because the grass is always greener on the other side, but I don't think I had realized that yet.

I had one of my most productive week last year when driving between Montreal and New-Bruswick - at the end of the autumn. The cold was so exotic! I loved every single minute of my vacation. I could only have loved it more if it had been snowing, but I know I'm partial with snow, so I wanted to test myself and see if even without snow I'd enjoy my vacations in the very same place, to remove a bit of exoticism. And yes I did.

Do you see how it relates to the experience mentionned in the article ? There will always be something that's attractive because it is different. Then the new become usual, and we get bored. And we leave and try something different, again and again. I think it's just human nature.

We want difference and exoticism, we want to be surrounded with people we can relate with but not too much, all these are incompatible needs. The problem is not in your work environment but in yourself. When no longer needs the exoticism to be happy, that's when the fun begins.

If you know what makes you tick, inspiration comes not only from an exotic place - like a cafe in New Brunswick can be to me - but also at the place you call home, wherever it might be.

Then it comes down to personal preferences about what weather you are more comfortable with, what kind of people you prefer having around, and your own philosophy. But not exoticism. It's a trap, a burden that can becomes non necessary. It happened just like that, someday I just started feeling that way.

At the moment, I'd say I only regret that my work will have little impact, but I've settled with the rest. 2 tech conference a year and I get the minimal contact with other techies I need to survive :-) And while some exoticism is good (I say I enjoyed my vacation) it is no longer a need.