Frenchman Tries to Run his Business from a Desert Island Using Solar Panels

Life on a desert island, on the face of it, always seems so idyllic - a paradise. Guthier Toulemonde, a Frenchman, has decided to take a trip to paradise, travelling 6,000 miles in order to live for 40 days on a deserted island, à la Robinson Crusoe.

His adventure is not merely an attempt to escape the rat race and relax on the beach. He will take his laptop, tablet, and a satellite phone, and from the middle of nowhere will try and run his publishing business as normal, powered by portable solar cells. He wants to prove that advances in modern technology and solar energy can revolutionise the traditional attitude towards working in an office, and prove that jobs can really be carried out from anywhere in the world.

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The 54 veteran adventure traveller has already participated in trips to the North pole and the Amazon, and states that he will use his stint on the tiny, uninhabited Indonesian island that measures just half a mile in length and a third of a mile in width, as “a kind of laboratory, to test whether it’s possible to work when you are very far away from civilization.”

In 2003 Toulemonde, a former banker, co-founded Timbropresse, a small Paris-based publishing group, and became the editor of two magazines, one for stamp collectors, and the other for real estate professionals. He claims that he will “try to continue my work as if I were at the office in Paris.”

On his trip Toulemonde will take with him; two solar panels, a computer, a tablet, an HD digital camera, and two tents (one for himself the other for the electrical equipment.) He will have to build his tents on a raised platform in order to protect himself from the island’s population of venomous snakes and scorpions, and other than a few bags of rice that he will take with him, will have to fish and forage for food. Due to the lack of fresh water he will also take a seawater desalinator, and collect rainwater whenever possible.

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Bloomberg Businessweek claims that Raphaël Domjan, a Swiss adventurer, who met Toulemonde whilst they were sailing a solar-powered catamaran around the world, will stay on the island for the first three days in order to help set up the solar panels which will power the computer and satellite phone system.

Despite the primitive location and the absence of luxuries, there are already quite a few people interested to see the results of his ‘experiment’. Toulemonde says that he has had “quite a number of business owners who’ve contacted me who are interested to see how this could function.” Spending a month of peace and quiet in the sun is the perfect detox for modern life, even whilst continuing to put in full working days.

By. Charles Kennedy of Oilprice.com