When COVID-19 shut down live events across the world, concert-hound Cam Lindsay found himself looking for novel ways to experience community. The USC Iovine and Young Academy alumnus, whose background is in integrating augmented reality with live performance, hit the road to live the #vanlife – a nomadic lifestyle of living in a van full- or part-time – which paved the way towards a new mobile community unbound by adventure.

Lindsay is a community builder and product manager for Kift, a co-living company that reimagines community, work, and lifestyle through van life. The Academy opened the door to a newfound unification of his professional pursuits and his craving for connection.

"A friend of mine, Jackson, who's another Academy student … sent me an article about this company Kift that does essentially community hubs for van life,” Lindsay explains of his introduction to an eye-opening and career-pivoting #vanlife initiative. 

Lindsay resolved to take his remote work with him and experience these communities for himself. "I decided to jump in!" he recalls. "From September to mid-October, I was living in a van doing the whole co-living situation with a bunch of different people and made lifelong friends."

Lindsay’s van venture led him to CEO of Kift, Colin O'Donnell, who he connected with "on a deep level," as Lindsay describes. O'Donnell shared his idea of transforming Kift from a traditional startup into a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), and offered Lindsay a role at Kift to facilitate the transition. Lindsay realized that this journey into #vanlife could unlock a state-of-the-art way of connecting communities.

A type of organization that leverages blockchain technology, DAOs are "the new frontier of organizational structures and thinking," according to Lindsay. "How do you take away a lot of the hierarchies that are embedded inside of organizations and think about more co-creation and participation from everybody?"

DAOs aren't familiar or mainstream to many, so as Director of Member Experience and DAO at Kift, a large part of Lindsay's role involves educating the Kift van-dwelling community on the details of DAOs. He is the main point of contact between Kift's leadership and its community. 

As Kift prepares to launch its first NFT, Lindsay sees it as an opportunity for Kift's van-dwelling community to pool resources and chart their own course. 

"It's all about giving people that are active in the community ownership in that community,” he says.

The old Tolkien adage “not all those who wander are lost” has never been truer thanks to #vanlife’s flourishing popularity, as well as the resources Kift provides to nomadic lifestyle novices and devotees. Lindsay's work is about as far as possible from designing augmented reality events for Coachella, but he has found a fresh approach to building the sense of togetherness that he fell in love with in the concert scene. His mission is driven with purpose and his values and actions have never been so aligned. 

"Everything for me revolves around people, everything for me revolves around ethical responsibility and making sure that we're trying our best to do the right things and becoming our best selves."

Academy alum Cam Lindsay went off the beaten path to experience the #vanlife. Now he’s paving the way for a new approach to remote working, living, and connecting.

Living the #vanlife: Cam Lindsay

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