Those who have been reading my last few posts would know that I moved to Canberra recently. One nice thing about freelancing is that your work isn’t necessarily as tied to your location, but moving to a new city has its own difficulties, so it’s nice to make things as painless as possible.

Start networking

If you know where you’ll be moving a while beforehand, it’s absolutely worth focusing your networking on the place you’ll be moving to. I’ve found Twitter works particularly well for this, and started following Canberrans in web and related industries months before moving here. Besides being interesting people in their own right, people have been fantastic with giving me advice, suggestions about where I can get work and general information about the city. If you’re willing to put in the effort to sincerely get to know people, people tend to respond to that – even through something like Twitter.

Moving to a new city is hard in itself, and moving a business on top of that is even harder. It really helps to have a network of people with similiar interests ready to meet you and help you out as soon as you arrive, both in a professional and a personal sense.

Once you get there, scope out what networking and industry events are on and go introduce yourself. Canberra has quite an active and friendly web community, so I was quite lucky in this sense.

Have business cards ready

Unfortunately I left the printing of my cards too late – by the time I was ready the printers were on their Christmas holiday. The lesson is – make sure things like this are prepared early! I think handing out cards when you first meet people is a good way to be remembered and easily contactable, rather than being that new girl in town whose name no one can remember. Make sure you leave plenty of time for printing (unlike me) so that you’ll have them all ready and with you when you leave.

Back up everything important

So many things can go wrong in the process of moving (my mattress was lost somewhere in Sydney or Newcastle by the removalist company, for example) that it’s incredibly important to back things up if you aren’t doing so already. Sounds obvious I suppose, but I forgot all about this until the last day and was running around backing things up like crazy at the last minute.

Make sure you have temporary internet access

My hotel said that it had broadband internet access, but as it turned out it was expensive, unreliable and after a few days dropped out altogether. Cafes with wireless internet can be okay, but can be quite inconvenient if you’ve just moved to a new place with no car. In the end I bought a mobile broadband USB key and some prepaid credit, which served me nicely while I was in that hotel and will continue to until I have internet set up at home.

Having internet access was important to me so I could keep in contact with people, look up new rentals to check out while we were still finding a place to live, and most importantly get some work done. I’m sure some people could live without it for a few weeks, but I don’t think I could do much without it! Being a thrifty sort of person I was hesitant to get mobile broadband at first, but it’s certainly a business cost, very very useful for now and in the future,  and reasonably priced for the short term (as long as you don’t go downloading anything gigantic). I wish I had bought it before instead of messing around with the hotel’s overpriced internet, which is why I’m telling you now.

If you’d prefer to not fork out the money for mobile internet, check around for nearby cafes with free wireless beforehand so know where to go when you need it.

If you’re working from home, make sure there’s room for an office

I insisted on finding a place with at least two bedrooms, because I really, really didn’t want to have to set up an ‘office’ in a corner of the bedroom or lounge room. It meant that rent is a bit more expensive, but when I consider that I could be attempting to work on the dining table I’d say it’s absolutely worth it. If the option is there, the separation of Life and Work is great to have, I’ve found. So keep it in mind while looking for a place to live, or you might find your productivity and general happiness sinking.

Those are the main things that I found in my experience moving, although since my business has really just started it might be different for others. It can be quite a stressful experience, so stay cool and good luck!