Saltwater
Making Dubrovnik a year-round destination for digital nomads
Working wherever you please can mean a life of wifi hotspots and sunshine. And for Saltwater in Croatia, creating an attractive environment for digital nomads means a more sustainable economy, too.
When I was approached by Tanja Polegubić, founder of Saltwater and co-founder of the Digital Nomad Association (DNA) Croatia, she already had a brilliant plan underway.
Alongside the City of Dubrovnik, the Dubrovnik Tourist Board, and Total Croatia News, she’d developed Digital Nomads In Residence (DNIR), a completely unique initiative that would attract digital nomads to work, and stay, in Dubrovnik — reducing the city’s reliance on summer tourism. Tanja called this concept Dubrovnik 365.
Fantastic idea, isn’t it? But with a four-week residency planned and a series of in-depth workshops to deliver, it was really rather a lot for one woman to handle. Enter: Twine.
Initially, I came aboard to facilitate Tanja’s workshops with digital nomads, local businesses, and officials. But, as they often do, my fresh pair of eyes soon spotted other ways to make the project even better.
In this case, I noticed the workshops felt a little disjointed, and didn’t take into account the ideas of the local community. So, I helped Tanja to step back and rethink. Together we created a new vision for the workshops — design for all, using co-creation methods — which would consider everyone’s needs and challenges as we searched for ways to make Dubrovnik a true year-round destination. In these workshops, I then used design thinking, customer journey mapping, ideation, prototyping, and storytelling to work with the nomads, businesses, local community and others to find a solution that truly worked for all.
And that we did.
Photo credit: Zoltan Nagy
Our recommendations went down an absolute storm. After our final presentation, the Mayor of Dubrovnik announced that our participants’ ideas would be put into action and that the city would provide co-working spaces shaped by their suggestions. Urban planning and business publications have shown an interest in our work and recommendations - The Fast Company covered it too. There are plans for Dubrovnik and Zagreb to create a digi-nomads trail, carving a path for their shared remote workers. And I can’t forget, either, the extraordinary feedback from our participants themselves. Over those four short weeks, many of the nomads made lifelong friends.
Happy customers all around, then — including the mayor and deputy mayor who had championed this project from the start. That’s what I call a job well done.
The Dubrovnik Digital Nomads in Residence project is now award-winning! At the European CONVENTA Crossover Best Event Awards held in Ljubljana in August 2021, the project was the crowd favourite, securing the Audience Favourite Award in all categories
Better together
I rarely work alone, and the Saltwater project was another opportunity to extend my talented network. I was honoured to join the team assembled by Tanja, working with Erin Maxwell, a former Apple executive and global wanderer; Jenni Carbins from Mark, an international placemaking consultancy; and of course, Tanja herself. Together, we were formidable.
“I contacted Anna early on for the DNIR project with the City and Tourist Board of Dubrovnik. From the moment we started our discussions, Anna knew exactly what we needed, fine-tuning the initial vision and sharpening the focus. It gave me real confidence to move forward. Anna’s decades of experience were always evident; it was easy - and fun - to soundboard ideas, collaborate with partners and ensure we were always prepared, could reflect and adjust where needed and meet our project goals. I highly recommend Anna and look forward to our next opportunity to work together.”
Tanja Polegubic, Saltwater
What an amazing team, and a fascinating project. I’d love to know how I can help with your changes and challenges. Shall we chat?