Wi-Fi spreads teleworkers to casual venues

With no office in a sales territory that stretches from Port Charlotte to Crystal River, Adam Worsham frequently lands at Panera Bread or the Indigo Coffee shop near his house.

"It's a means between meetings," said Worsham, a territory business manager for Valvoline. "I'm just constantly on the road, constantly traveling."

He comes for the free Wi-Fi, stopping in between meetings to create a PowerPoint presentation, work on a report, review numbers or catch up on e-mail.

Worsham, 25, is among a growing group of workers known as digital nomads that experts say represents a natural evolution in teleworking. The Internet let millions of wired people work from home; now, with widespread Wi-Fi, many have cut the wires and left home.

They work anywhere they can find a solid wireless connection - coffee shops, hotel lobbies, bars or even poolside - where they can reach their colleagues via instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail and occasionally by voice on their iPhones or Skype. Some, such as Worsham, dress for meetings with clients; others wear T-shirts and shorts.

However, don't let the sometimes-casual look of these "nomads" fool you.

Carsten Sorensen, a London School of Economics professor who studies nomads, said people working away from an office often feel pressure to work harder to protect their freedom. This can make working as a nomad "both heaven and hell," he said, even leading to burnout.

Although the number of digital nomads is intrinsically difficult to measure - they are constantly in motion and difficult to pin down for polling - evidence of a real shift in where Americans work is mounting. Dell reports that its digital nomad Web site is getting tens of thousands of hits a month. Panera, a popular spot for people working wirelessly, logs 1.5 million Wi-Fi sessions a month.

Locally, Panera has seen its number of telecommuters increase by 20 percent in the past year, and 10 percent to 15 percent of customers use its free Wi-Fi on a daily basis, said Vikki Kaiser, director of marketing and public relations for the Covelli Family Limited Partnership, which owns 20 Panera restaurants in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.

Even when he's not meeting clients, Worsham escapes his one-bedroom South Tampa condo for the coffee shop on days he needs to work. It's a good way of separating work and home and of meeting new friends, especially with so many salespeople setting up shop at Panera.

"It just seems like it's getting more and more every day where people are working out of there," Worsham said.