(Fortune Magazine) -- Working from bed usually gets a bum rap. But when you've created the world's biggest community-written encyclopedia, with more than seven million entries in 143 languages, no one can accuse you of being lazy. Jimmy Wales, 41, is the brains behind Wikipedia, which, with the help of the thousands of unpaid contributors who create and edit its content, has reshaped how the world finds, shares, and debates information. His organization, now part of the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit based in St. Petersburg, employs just ten people. Yet the Alabama native - who made his money trading futures but still swears by his Hyundai Accent - now spends much of his time working with Wikia, Wikipedia's for-profit sister site that plans to launch a search engine he hopes will one day rival Yahoo and Google. Fortune's Julie Schlosser sat down with Wales - on a couch - to discuss how to manage workers remotely, the benefits of wearing black, and why he compares himself to David Hasselhoff.
WORK IN COMFORT. I am always on the go. I'm in the Wikipedia office in Florida one day a month and in the Wikia office [in San Mateo, Calif.] five days a month. The rest of the time I'm on the road. Wherever my laptop is, that's my office. I spend a lot of time working in hotel rooms. My preferred location for work is bed. It's comfy, and it's a short commute.
KNOW WHO YOU'RE HIRING. If you're going to run a company like ours, with people everywhere, you have to be careful about who you're hiring, because you have no idea what they're doing all day. The people we hire come to us from the Wikipedia site. We know them and trust them, so they don't need a lot of supervision. I talk to them through IM, e-mail, and Skype. I use IM on my 8525 AT&T [smartphone]. I bought it the same day the iPhone came out. I think I was the only person in the store buying something different.
SPEAK YOUR PEOPLE'S LANGUAGE. I always joke that I am like David Hasselhoff big in Germany. German is the largest Wikipedia language after English, so I decided to learn it. It was pathetic trying to lead global projects and not being able to speak the language. I listen to Pimsleur language CDs when I'm in the car. And I bought a MacBook in Germany because practicing on an American keyboard is quite challenging. I didn't realize how difficult German is to learn, or I might have picked something else.
DRESS SMART FOR TRAVEL. People think I wear black as a fashion statement, but I do it so I can drink red wine and spill it on myself during a trip. And since 9/11, I've switched to slip-ons when I'm on the road. I wonder what's happened to the stock of the manufacturers that made laces for business shoes.
TREAT EMPLOYEES AS IF THEY'RE VOLUNTEERS. I've gotten good management experience from working with volunteers [who edit Wikipedia entries]. You can't just tell them what to do. A good manager knows the same is true with employees. If you have the right people, and you're organizing things sensibly, there shouldn't be a lot of telling people what to do. 
