Building New Cities Starts With People: Digital Nomads, Families, and the Minimum Viable Society– Daniel Thompson is the co-founder and CEO of Noma Collective, a global community of remote workers, location-independent professionals and, increasingly, families, who travel and live together in different parts of the world a month at a time. Born and raised in the UK to a family of musicians, he spent his early twenties in music marketing and PR and ran one of the biggest weekly nights in the dubstep scene before leaving to travel. After two years on the road he settled in Buenos Aires, where he launched the country's first arts members club, and spent summers running large-scale European festivals including Outlook, Dimensions and Secret Solstice. He moved to Belize in 2019, and when the pandemic hit he reopened a hotel as a pop-up co-live that became Noma Collective in 2020. He has since acquired the work-travel program Hacker Paradise, and now develops the ideas at the centre of this conversation: his "7 Stages of Remote Life" framework and his new Minimum Viable Society project. He is based in Mérida, Mexico.Timothy Allen sits down with Daniel in Próspera for a conversation about the quiet problem underneath the whole free cities movement: not law, not land, but people. How do you actually get human beings to turn up, and then how do you get them to stay?They move from the idea that digital nomadism is a stage rather than a destination, through Daniel's belief that families are the missing key to critical mass, to his Minimum Viable Society project and a genuine disagreement between the two men about whether you build a new community on empty land or on one of the thousands of depopulated villages already standing across southern Europe. Along the way: how Noma started by accident in a locked-down Belize hotel, why it turned out to be solving loneliness rather than infrastructure, what a portable schooling network looks like, how a broken property ladder might be replaced with subscription-to-ownership, and why integrating with the existing local community matters more than any amount of capital.In this conversation:Why "people," not regulations or coastline, is the binding constraint on every new city and network stateDigital nomadism as a stage, not a destination, and the path from remote work to multi-local living to a multi-generational network society"Multi-local," feeling at home in more than two places, a term Daniel credits to Emi of Crecimiento, Argentina's leading network state movementHow Noma Collective began as a COVID pop-up in a Belize hotel, and why it turned out to be solving loneliness rather than infrastructureWhy families, not lone nomads, may be the key to critical mass, and the 500 families who applied for a single month-long hubThe Próspera family hub at Pristine Bay, and why walkability and a kitchen beat a resort every timeBoundless Life and the case for connected, portable schoolingThe AI threat to an education system built on memorisation, and newer models like Alpha School and Acton AcademyReturn-to-office mandates, GitLab as a fully remote counterexample, and the "soft layoff" theoryThe Minimum Viable Society project: assembling a society from parts (health, housing, education, agriculture) instead of gathering like-minded people and hopingSubscription-to-ownership: using economies of scale to lower the barrier onto the property ladder, with echoes of the Homestead ActThe build-versus-buy debate: empty land and a chateau near Montpellier, against Europe's depopulated villagesWhy galvanising the existing local community, rather than building an enclave, is essentialVeritas Villages, SafetyWing and Plumia, and the partners already building the physical layerTimestamps (audio version, includes Timothy's episode introduction):Guest: Daniel Thompson - Noma Collective | LinkedIn | Minimum Viable Society | Instagram @nomacollectivehqThe Free Cities Podcast is the official podcast of the Free Cities Foundation hosted by Timothy Allen. New episodes every Friday. Long-form, in-person conversations with the builders, investors, residents, and thinkers shaping the future of Free Cities, charter cities, special economic zones, network states, private cities, and governance innovation worldwide.Listen & subscribe: freecities.fm | All platforms | Fountain.fm (bonus episodes & early access)Community: Telegram | Free Cities Foundation newsletter | Free Cities ConferenceSupport the show: Donate via Stripe | BTC: bc1q5jun0nzxzqepch84rqk0jnv0rd8uvns28df7mg | V4V podcast appsLead show sponsor: Veritas Villages - Off-grid, energy self-sufficient communities for freedom-minded people in Latin America. Bitcoin accepted for property purchases.Follow: Timothy Allen on X & Nostr | Free Cities Foundation on X & Nostr