Wide Teams

Podcast #24: Derek Wade

In this episode, a conversation with Derek Wade, a collaboration expert and Team Coach at Kumido Adaptive Systems. We talk about building “high-gravity” distributed teams, work-scapes, and the benefits of simple, free-form tools for collaboration. This episode is “back from the dead” — all of the audio from my side of the interview was lost, but I reconstructed and re-dubbed my questions so that I could share this interview. Show notes: Derek can be found at derekwwade.net, and is @derekwwade on Twitter. Slides for the presentation “High Gravity Distributed Teams“ The #lrnchat hashtag on Twitter I did a video demo of the Cardmeeting tool

Wide Links #17

Dec 10, 10 • In Links

Some of my favorite reading on dispersed teams from the last week. In this edition: investing in your home office; staying in touch with your team; agile software practices for distributed teams; giving a presentation over the internet, and much more. Where to Invest for the Biggest Productivity Gains You can save a lot of money by working remotely, but that doesn’t mean you should skimp on the tools that really matter. A few strategically chosen expenditures can dramatically increase your productivity and connectivity. tags: wideteams Remote workers can’t escape talking on the phone, or its modern day equivalents. I personally have a fairly expensive handset hooked up to my landline, which I use when it’s important to have great call quality and a connection I can depend upon. You might not consider a landline

Wide Teams Podcast #21: Interview with Tony Amoyal

Dec 7, 10 • In Interviews, Podcast

Can you work remotely from a snowboarding vacation in Montana? Software developer Tony Amoyal says "why not?". In this episode, he and I discuss the tradeoffs involved in being part of a software team while staying mobile

Have a spam day! Making communication tools fun.

Nov 8, 10 • In Practices

Picking a new team communication tool is one thing. Getting everyone to use it is another. Here’s a fun technique for easing adoption of a new tool. So you’ve evaluated the options and picked a chat tool for your distributed team. Or a presence app. Or maybe you’ve decided to use video mail. Now you have another challenge ahead of you: getting everyone to use it. Some people are natural early adopters. I’ll try any tool out if it’s new and interesting, and keep using it if I find it helpful. Others are slower to change. One way to get over that initial resistance to a new tool is to make a game of it. One one of the teams I work with, the engineering leadership decided to roll out Yammer for status updates and

Wide Teams Podcast #18: Ruby DCamp 2010 Part 3

Nov 3, 10 • In Interviews, Podcast

The third and final part of a series. This is a recording of a round-table discussion on distributed software teams held at the Ruby DCamp 2010 unconference in northern Virginia. Be sure too listen to Part 1 and Part 2 if you haven’t already. Show notes: The Ruby DCamp website Trevor Lalish-Menagh is @trevmex on Twitter and blogs at http://trevmex.com/ Nick Gauthier of SmartLogic Solutions is @ngauthier on Twitter Chris Strom is @eee_c on Twitter and blogs at http://japhr.blogspot.com/ Camille Bell doesn’t have a Twitter account that I could find, but perhaps she will correct me. Jim Gay of Saturn Flyer is @saturnflyer on Twitter Brian Glusman of ENJYN is @bglusman on Twitter Apologies to the other participants whose info I wasn’t able to hunt down – please comment or email me and I’ll update this post!

Wide Links #13: Delivery, Definitions, Data

Oct 29, 10 • In Links

Distributed insights for distributed teams. The week’s best posts about dispersed teams and remote work, from around the web. In this edition: seminars from successful distributed team leaders, an article that makes a thought-provoking distinction between being on a dispersed team and being a remote worker, some tips on convincing a manager to let you go remote, and much more. Holla, An Open-source Group Chat App – Annotated tags: wideteams Holla is a simple group chat application that Developer Alex MacCraw describes as being a little like an open-source version of Campfire, 37Signals’ collaboration tool. Holla doesn’t have all of the advanced features that Campfire has, like built-in conference calling. However, it does support file sharing, and it’s free and runs on your own server, so you get to retain a degree of control that

Wide Teams Podcast Episode 15: Intridea

Oct 11, 10 • In Interviews, Podcast

Intridea is one of the largest fully dispersed software companies that I’m aware of, and they are still growing fast. I’ve talked to them before – back in episode 9, I spoke with Michael Bleigh. When I visited the Ruby Hoedown in Nashville a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to talk to a whole passel of Intrideans. We talked about why Intridea chose to build a distributed team, how they manage software teams that are spread across the world, and the tools they have used and built to facilitate communication

Wide Teams Podcast Episode 13: Interviews with Jody Alkema and Peter van Hardenburg

Sep 13, 10 • In Interviews, Podcast

Two final interviews from RailsConf 2010 this week. The first is with Jody Alkema, a web developer with Domain 7 who spoke to me about his experience augmenting his Agile software team with some remote help. The second is with Peter van Hardenburg, a developer at Heroku who is transitioning back to a collocated team after a couple years of working remotely

Wide Teams Podcast #6: BohConf Roundtable Part 1

Jul 19, 10 • In Podcast

Today on the podcast, a recording of a roundtable discussion held at the BohConf unconference inside of RailsConf 2010. Topcs covered include teleconferencing practices, why instant messaging can be an antipattern, and different strategies for estimating work