Takeouts from Tallinn: e-Residency and Latitude59

Maya Middlemiss  0:13  
Welcome to the future is freelance podcast for solopreneurs digital nomads slow Mads consultants, remote workers, ie residents, and people living a life without traditional boundaries. We're here for everyone who defies categorization and makes a living and a life their own way. Every other freelance Friday, were serving up an audio cocktail of expert tips inspired insights and stories from the frontiers of freelancing to help you achieve success with your borderless business. whatever success means to you as you live life on your own terms, thanks for listening to the future as freelance and for being part of the future of work revolution.

Maya Middlemiss  1:03  
So hello, hello future is freelance listeners.

Maya Middlemiss  1:08  
Some of you will have already spotted that this isn't our regular freelance Friday, and we'd return to the two week release schedule. However, what I've got for you today is another of those little extra bonus episodes that I couldn't wait to share with you. Because what I wanted to do in this one is reflect on the time that I had a recent visit to Estonia. So much like the little bonus episode I made about going to running remote in Portugal. This one is all about my visit to Tallinn last week to meet with some very important people and to attend the latitude 59 tech festival. So Tallinn in Estonia, it's I had to check on Google, it's 3700 kilometers away from where I live in Spain, about as far as you can go and still be on the European mainland. In fact, I just had to check that on Google Maps. Apparently, it would take one day and 20 hours to drive there if anybody wanted to it was slightly less than that honest answer, but not a great deal less, it was well worth the trip. It Estonia is kind of my digital spiritual home if you like because I have been an E resident of Estonia for just over five years ago. Now the reason for that is because five years ago, I was happily freelancing. And don't get me wrong, I'm still very happily freelancing, as you will know from this podcast. But freelancing as a legal business structure does have its limitations. And it certainly ran into some then because I had a client, a prospective client who had a US entity and another one in Asia, but nothing in Europe. And basically, at the time, they had no way that they could figure out to safely and legally compliantly make a contract with a European freelancer. It was for a substantial piece of work. And it was to be completed over a few months. And I really didn't want to lose this piece of work. So I realized at the time, what I needed was a limited company, and I needed it as quickly as possible. So I looked very briefly into the idea of creating a limited company in Spain. But at that time, I was actually in the process of liquidating a limited company in Spain. And I was fairly certain I never wanted to go down that route again, not with a gun to my head. And even if I'd wanted to at the time, it would have taken a matter of months in order to actually form the business. And then the costs involved with liquidating would have been well beyond the value of the contract in question. I also looked at forming a UK Limited Company, because even though I had been living in Spain as a Spanish resident and tax resident for many years, I still held in fact, I still hold my British passport. And I knew that I could set up a UK Limited Company very quickly, and very affordably. However, this was 2017 when talking about. So it was actually it was six years rather than five time flies. When I started looking at this, it was basically a time of tremendous uncertainty about Britain's role in Europe, not that there's a great deal more certainty now. But when it came to the idea of forming a business, I felt very clearly that I knew that my future, business future political future and everything else like in Europe, and I didn't feel that forming a business in the UK was the right move at that point. So that took me to a Estonia, because I'd been reading about the Estonia digital governance infrastructure. At the time I was writing a lot in web three data projects. We didn't call it web three. Then we talked about distributed ledger and blockchain and Estonia's digital government had something quite some lead to a blockchain as a central repository of information that was accessed via secure digital keys in in much the same way as the more recent projects. And so I'd come across this as an example and and heard about the fact that this was now being used to provide access online to non Estonians for the purpose of business formation through what was then a fairly new E residency scheme. It had been running for several years, but the numbers were much lower than and it was still very innovative. There was nothing like it anywhere else in the world. Again, there are e residency schemes now of different kinds around the world. But at that moment is Estonia. Yes, that was perfect. That solved the problem for me, I had to become an Estonian a resident, which meant obtaining a digital ID card which I applied to the Estonian police and border guard to obtain. And that bit took, I think it was three or four weeks at the time and involved a trip to Madrid, to the Estonian embassy, in order to receive my physical kit that I needed to access the digital infrastructure, and to have my ID and fingerprints checked, because obviously, they need to make sure that you are who you say you are when you become an Estonian e resident. However, it didn't require me to visit a Estonia at that time. I did visit of Estonia later that year, as it turned out, because I wanted to open a bank account. And there were a few specific things that still require face to face showing up in the world. And banking is one of them to this day. But I only had a very brief visit, then I liked a lot of what I saw in Tallinn but and I wished I'd arranged to stay longer. And I thought I'll come back next year, or the year after or sometime. And then of course, the whole world wasn't going anywhere for a while. And basically it hadn't been back to Tallinn to Estonia at all until last week. So the reason that I went back Well, for one thing, the focus of my work has changed a lot over that time still very much about emergent technologies, and collaboration. But as you will know, regular listeners, I focus extensively on the future of work. And that has led me to some wonderful collaborations with Estonians, including the Estonian e residency team. Because the scheme has grown and grown. It's celebrated onboarding it's 100,000 1000 digital citizen earlier this year, which is a wonderful milestone, when you consider that the country itself has a population of 1.3 million. And I won't forget that point 3 million because I know that that's very important to them. It's just like my five foot three and a half that half as important to me, you make the most of what you have, and you accentuate the positive. And the positive thing for a Estonia is that they now have this vast contingency of digital residents, people who care about Estonia, who have set up their business there who are invested in the country in one way or another. Some of them may never visit Estonia for others, it's more of a path to even investing and possible physical relocation, perhaps even citizenship in the long run. Although the residency status itself does not confer any rights to reside, or even visit Estonia outside of your normal visa and passport entitlement. It is a purely digital residency. But what it does is it draws people to a Estonia and shows you what's so amazing about this tiny country. For me, it definitely feels like my digital home, the technological and business climate where I want to operate. It hasn't quite got the meteorological climate that I think I could cope with. Given that I'm such a wimp, I left the UK for Spain in search of greater warmth in the winter. So I think for the time being, I'll continue to enjoy the wonderful fact that I can physically live in Spain, hold on to my British passport and operate my business in Estonia. Nothing could be better. So it was lovely to visit though, and I seem to manage to take the Spanish weather with me last week as well. And I had a really amazing week. So the reason that I went last week, after all this time was twofold. The first reason was that I and a number of others have recently been appointed to the officially recognized role of envoy for the residency program. Now this is a great honor. It's it's very humbling to be recognized for largely what I am the rest of the appointed envoys were doing anyway, more or less as part of our of physical business presence in the world that you residency has become a part of our story, a part of our life a part of our business, and therefore, we answer questions about it from other people. Certainly through the remote work Spain network, I talked to a great many people about what open In a business in Estonia involves what a residency is what it is not. There's lots of misconceptions around tax and things like that. So, and because of the work I do for the department itself and creating content, I have become quite knowledgeable about those distinctions and about explaining the use cases, explaining the boundaries of the scheme, and explaining what the benefit is on so many levels of becoming an Estonian resident. So it was a great privilege to have that recognized as that reflection of what I do anyway, to give it some formal structure and a role, and also to be part of a network of wonderful entrepreneurs. Now, regular listeners have met one of my fellow invoice actually, mark or his that was in season one, episode eight last year, because he is part of the official representation body of EU residents in Estonia. I hadn't actually met any of the others until last week until just over a week ago. And it was a really wonderful day that we all spent together as guests of the E residency department, not least because the people in the department themselves are lovely. And, of course, they are people I've worked with as clients for a long time. But it was wonderful to get to know more of them as individuals. But the envoy team and the community leaders who are people tasked with raising awareness, specifically within their local communities and developing the residency program in that way. This group of appointed spokespeople were just the most fantastic group to spend a day with. And we did spend a whole day we had media training, which was great fun. The head of the residency teams, PR Catherine Varga taught us how to interview on camera. And she tested us she tried to give us testing of a hostile interviewing environment, even though she was far too lovely to be especially hostile. It was really interesting, actually, to see how we behaved even under that degree of contrived pressure to answer questions articulately and non defensively and fully. And it was great to just spend that time with other people as part of that network.

Maya Middlemiss  12:13  
That's not least because these are entrepreneurs who are fascinating in their own right. And that's one of the reasons that I really love writing for the residency department. In fact, because every resident I've ever met, and profiled as a case study has been absolutely fascinating. And these people chosen as representative spokespeople were clearly some of the most interesting and achievement oriented, creative, just really friendly, lovely people to hang out with. I even felt a touch of imposter syndrome that some of these were people who were serial entrepreneurs who've built great businesses, where I really see myself as solopreneur forever. And I'm not interested in that kind of growth. But they were all so welcoming, so open. And it really reminded me how much in fact, our solopreneurs do need networks and community with this is something we talk about a lot on this show, even in last week's episode with Ali Mian from Costa women. And in the previous seasons, as well, we have spoke to Gonzalo Hall from Nomad x in season one, episode 17, and Tarik Calusa, who's building nomads giving back in season two, Episode Five, so many people are concerned with this issue of connecting people. And that's because it's so important. You know, we live in a time where loneliness has reached truly epidemic proportions. And while we're having these opportunities to work in new ways, wherever we choose to live, where we want to where we want to live, and do business with whomever we want. Having those networks outside, even if your immediate business relationships, I believe is really fundamental. And we have the digital tools at our disposal to do that. And these networks aren't limited by geography, or demographics or anything else. E residency is such a powerful example of that. And for me, it was amazing to spend time hanging out in person with this new community, this new circle of wonderful creative entrepreneurs with whom I'm proud to be associated. So that was one a day of my visit to Estonia last week. The second one was to attend to the latitude 59 event. Now, latitude 59 Is it bills itself as the flagship startup and tech event of Estonia the world's first digital society. And that sums it up really, it's a two day full on conference, except it's way more than two days because of all the fringe events, including a large community event for the E residency community a couple of days before and there's workshops basically going on all week. And they really pack it in on a multitrack format, which is designed to create this amazing sense of FOMO that there's all these conversations going on around you There are so many people you can meet, the whole thing is oriented very much around networking opportunities, and connecting people with those unexpected synergistic connections with other people. If you're particularly if you're a restaurant, and you're not always in a stone here, it's a chance for people to connect, I could see so many reunions occurring people who maybe only visit the country once a year, even if it's the center of their business. And once a year, they're still doing better than me home passform. And we're just so glad to see one another and to reconnect. And that was all happening outside of a very packed an interesting programme of talks going on on several different platforms. So you really couldn't be everywhere at once. And I couldn't personally catch everything, you had to be a bit selective. There was some of the talks I particularly enjoyed, though one of them was entitled How not to become a digital nation. But why. And that one was particularly interesting for me as an E resident and working the way that I do. It was a panel which included now I'm going to apologize in advance for my mangling, mispronunciation of Estonian names, but it was chaired by Sandra, Sarah of who is the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications. And she had welcomed us at the envoy day earlier in the week. And the panel also included Lena virtuous, again, apologies for my pronunciation, who is the incoming CEO of the residency program itself. So you can imagine that that session really resonated for me, living as I do in one country, or digitally in Estonia and seeing firsthand the power of really interconnected digitalization on society. And it was really interesting to see how obviously, this was only possible with the kind of blank slate that is Estonia is unique history provided, and to compare and contrast that with Spain. And hopefully, things are improving in Spain, but it's taking its time and we're just not starting from the same place. Anybody who listened to the episode with Lewis Williams from enter geometers, in episode eight of the present series, will remember that things are getting better. In Spain, we have digital signatures, for example. But we don't have anything like the digital ID infrastructure of Estonia, because they built that from scratch in the 90s, they had a completely blank slate. And were able to think what do we need? It was so different from the legacy systems that most governments have had to adapt and change and retrofit over the years. So no wonder they've ended up with something very different. I mean, Spain does have digital signatures now. But mine's about to expire. So on Monday morning, I have to go and spend, it's officially a half hour appointment, renewing it at a local town hall, not my local town hall. In fact, I've got to travel. And I've had to block the whole morning off because I know how appointments work in Spain. And of course, it can't be done online. And it's going to involve physical bits of paper and probably being in the wrong building with a piece of documentation missing and having to go back for it. Then we have this joke in Spain that yeah, there's always one document missing. It's just so different in Estonia, where everything is done with this single digital identity and verified credentials using private public key encryption, which you can do from anywhere in the world on any device in seconds. And it's like different centuries. I love Spain, but boy, all the cliches about the administration and the oven could not be further from the truth. And that's why it was so interesting to hear the Estonian situation just being talked about. So normally, so taken for granted, or they have on this palette and throughout the whole event. That was a real eye opener for me. There are other discussions. Of course, I really enjoyed one on science and academia and the relationship between business and startup culture, with pure science and research and that eternal conflict between the pure and applied sides of innovation, how things are commercialized and how funding is driven to tech transfer. Obviously, this potential conflict is as real in Estonia as anywhere else. But academics have always had to pitch and win. And there's something about the startup mindset of Estonia that seems very powerfully to underpin that and make it more acceptable as a place where business and research can talk to each other and acknowledged their shared goals. And that alignment seems more viable here than maybe in some more old fashioned institutions. It's as good a place as any to speed up that journey anyway, from idea to viable product or solution. Though I did speak to one postdoc after that session who was dismayed by the increasing military emphasis on funding availability and of course, this is an inevitable Sign of the Times. Estonia continues to lead on cybersecurity and digital defense, but when your whole governance structure is digital, that has to be protected and it continues To be tested by geopolitical events, of course.

Maya Middlemiss  20:03  
And despite the incredible optimism of latitude 5920 23, it's another as inescapable reality is that we live in strange times at the moment, both for this part of the world and strange times for the tech sector. Estonia with its unique history has always exemplified the potential to rise to challenges with great creativity and positivity. And it's an optimistic as place as any to be solving these big problems. Of course, one of the other big themes from the event included AI, and the challenges and opportunities. They're in a theme that we've covered before on the show from the perspective of how it impacts us as freelancers. And we'll definitely return to it again, because it's so fast moving. And for now, I strongly maintain that learning and understanding this stuff is the most important priority for future proofing any career. And I attended a really useful workshop with power reweigh, the VP of artificial intelligence at Informatica, which is a Polish AI, digital startup, building health solutions to make health care accessible and convenient for everybody. The workshop was called embracing the AI revolution and making sense of it risks, opportunities and consequences. So for me, that was a definite one to take going to in the app and make sure that I showed up. And the most important takeout I found was the contextualization by somebody actually immersed in the space, rather than trying to figure it out from the outside. What I learned was, we're still so early in terms of popular understanding, and of course, when it comes to regulating, and we've had further statements this week, from people who are very concerned to slow things down and just try and get a grip on this before development goes off in too many different directions. But what Powell brought home to me is that the roots of artificial intelligence models are decades old. And it's all building on things which have been known and understood for a long time. Also, the chat based generative AI stuff that everyone's so excited about is such a small part of the whole industry. It's distracting, and it's dominating the discourse. But it's not nearly as exciting as some of the other applications like medical data. So I can well see a time where maybe we don't need as many humans involved in analyzing scan results, for example, but I think it'd be a long time before we want to replace the human doctor who sits down with those results and talks to the patient about what the implications are going to be for a life changing medical situation. So there's definitely hope, I found from from attending latitude for the humans and the AIS to continue to collaborate. Above all, there seem to be hope all round. And I was so glad that I went both to meet with the envoy network, some of whom I'm going to be seeing again soon when they a lot of them gather in Spain for staff summit very shortly. And for the tech community in general, because it has been a tough year. Don't get me wrong. It's been tough as a freelancer in this sector, finding the right people to work with. And it was great to see these sparks of real innovation and creativity coming together. And to realize that whenever there is crisis that does generate opportunity, and the technology sector combined with the Estonian mindset and embrace of creativity, and innovation, is no finer place for those things to really spark together in a crucible of future excitement and possibility. The CEO of latitude, LISI org summed it up very nicely when she said that this is a good time to take a moment to reflect and then to think about the future we want to create. We all want to live in it, and then we can go ahead and create it. And I think for me, that's what the future is freelance is all about. That's what the way that I've chosen to build my business of one and align my creative work around. It just felt like I was truly in my emotional, spiritual, digital home, even if my physical home remains 1000s of miles away. And I'm very grateful to Estonia and its wonderful people for having made me so welcome last week, and I'm grateful for all that they offer to the world in general. Thanks for listening. Thank you for listening to the future as freelance podcast. We appreciate your time and attention in a busy world and your busy life. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a fellow Freelancer help us grow this movement of independent entrepreneurs. If you rate and review the future is freelance and whatever app you're listening to this right now or over at futurists freelance dot x y Zed, then that will help spread the word and help us reach more people who need to hear this message and join the conversation. Together we can change the world and make sure the future is freelance. This is Maya Middlemiss Wishing you success and happiness in your enterprise. Until our next episode.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai