Wide Teams

Podcast #36: Ben Johnson of Merrill Corporation

Jun 13, 12 • In Featured, Interviews, Podcast

In this episode, Ben Johnson of Merrill Corporation talks about evolving into remote work, why working in an office is bad for focus and productivity, and why putting your face out on the Internet is a good thing. Show Notes: Twitter: @deafgreatdane Merrill Corporation Merrill DataSite Pragmatic Geek 01:10 – Ben’s introductory and background 01:37 – Merrill Corporation 02:20 – Evolving into remote work 03:12 – Tools 05:19 – Day to day operation 07:11 – Advantages of working remotely 10:41 – Remaining in touch with your team 12:45 – Helpful management techniques 13:53 – Standardized tools are important 16:45 – Advice for others working remotely

Podcast #32: Louis Font of Zyncro

May 16, 12 • In Featured, Interviews, Podcast

In this episode I talk to Louis Font of Zyncro. We talk about his internationally distributed team and how they, as a company, seek to be available to customers 24/7 no matter what time zone they are located in, solving communication gaps between businesses and social networks, and how important physical communication is in the world of remote work. Show Notes: ZyncroBlog Twitter: @zyncro Facebook 00:40 – Introduction 02:22 – Louis’ background 04:20 – Distributed team structure and background 09:08 – Challenges working distributed 10:30 – Cultural differences between team members 12:00 – Zyncro as a company 16:22 – Advice for distributed teams 17:20 – Future of distributed teams

Encouraging Involvement in Distributed Teams

Mar 14, 11 • In Basics, Featured, Practices, Tips & Hacks

One of the biggest challenges in remote work is simply making sure everyone has a strong sense of involvement. In this article Steven Baker, a veteran of dispersed agile software development teams, shares his experiences and recommendations for keeping the communication, camaraderie, and personal connections alive in a distributed setting. When you don’t occupy the same office for the same period of time every day with your co-workers, you can’t walk to your co-worker’s desk, or turn around in your chair to have a chat about what you’re working on. There is no water cooler to mill around get in the loop on what’s happening, and having lunch together is difficult. Differences in location, timezone, and working hours, can all combine to make you and the members of your team disconnected from each other. This

The Well-Equipped Remote Worker

Mar 7, 11 • In Conferences

Slides, notes, and links for the talk “The Well-Equipped Remote Worker” delivered on March 5th at the Daycamp 4 Developers 2 virtual conference. On March 5, 2011 I had the great pleasure of delivering a talk entitled “The Well-Equipped Remote Worker” at the Day Camp 4 Developers 2 virtual conference. I’d like to thank Cal Evans, all the other organizers and speakers, and especially the attendees for making the conference possible.I really enjoyed participating, loved the IRC chat, and got a lot of good advice from the other speakers’ talks. As promised, here are slides, notes and links to more information. But first, if you attended the talk, I would greatly appreciate it if you would rate it on SpeakerRate. Thanks! Slides The Well-Equipped Remote Worker View more presentations from Avdi Grimm

Celebrating Six Months of Wide Teams!

Dec 8, 10 • In Site News

It’s our 6-month anniversary! Come join us for a look back over our first half-year of existence, and tell us what you want us to cover in the future. Six months ago (technically, six months ago yesterday) I published the first Wide Teams blog post. Since then I’ve interviewed dozens of remote workers, made a lot of awesome new friends, and confirmed that a lot of people are interested in the subject of geographically dispersed teams. We’ve even been featured in the Wall Street Journal! Some stats as of today, for the record: 82 posts, and 122 comments. 21 episodes of the Wide Teams podcast. 119 RSS feed subscribers. 227 people follow @wideteams on Twitter. 37 Facebook fans. Here are our five most popular posts over the last six months: Ironically, the most popular post

Wide Links #16: Meeting, Coaching, Bridging, Chatting

Dec 3, 10 • In Links

A heaping helping of links for remote workers today! In this edition, why work often doesn’t happen at work; an open thread on managing remote workers; advice for improving communication between the main office and remote workers – and much, much more. Making a long-distance relationship work: When feds go remote – Tom Fox tags: wideteams Don’t forget the small talk.When separated by distance, it’s even more important to make small talk about the little things in life to build rapport. Don’t forget to establish a sort of virtual water cooler for your folks by talking with them about their lives, the big game or whatever you can find to make a personal connection. Consider having your team virtually share their favorite recipes or books each week to help them stay connected while telecommuting. Jason

Saving the Day with Social Media

Nov 29, 10 • In Practices

One of the biggest struggles in a dispersed team is to maintain a sense of connection with your coworkers. Social media can play a role in keeping the team together. It was one of those days. Things just weren’t going right and I felt like everything – and everyone – was against me. I posted a frustrated, grumpy Tweet (squawk?) to Twitter. If this were a story in the traditional media about the “risks of social media” this is where you might expect the story to get really bad – the boss sees the tweet, and all hell breaks loose. What actually happened was this: a coworker – someone I hadn’t yet met in person, and whom I hadn’t really gotten to know – IMed me privately to see if I was OK. They asked

Wide Teams Podcast Episode 19: Interview with Steven Willmott

Nov 23, 10 • In Interviews, Podcast

In this episode of the Wide Teams podcast, I interview Steven Willmott of 3Scale. We talk about supporting clients in multiple timezones, what you do when one of your developers who lives on a mountainside and generates his own power gets hit with a snowstorm, and much more!

The Rambling Remote Worker: Marieke Guy on virtual teams, event amplification, and the future of remote work

Nov 22, 10 • In Basics, Experiences

Today we are lucky to have a guest post from remote worker and blogger Marieke Guy. In this article she recounts her own transition to remote remote work and then to becoming a champion for remote workers; discusses the concept of “event amplification”; and talks a little about the future of distributed teams. Hello, I’m Marieke Guy and I work for UKOLN, a centre of excellence in digital information management. I’ve been there for 10 years now and have worked on a variety of different ‘information management’ projects. The majority of my work today centres around the Web (especially Web 2.0 and beyond), digital preservation and innovation. There’s more on my staff page. Why be a Remote Worker? UKOLN is based at the University of Bath. For those of you who haven’t heard of Bath

Wide Links #14

Nov 12, 10 • In Links

Another fresh serving of articles and presentations about remote work and distributed teams, from all around the web. In this edition: building trust, collaborating on visual design while distributed, keeping a team together during dry spells, and much more! Creative Remote Collaboration » IQ Blog – Annotated tags: wideteams Remote collaboration is important for any line of work where people are divided by time and space, but the need is expanded in a creative industry where there is an increased requirement of collaboration, communication, and execution of ideas. When you work for a creative agency with colleagues and clients around the country (and developers around the world), how can you improve and streamline the creative collaboration process? Building Trust Within Virtual Teams – Small Steps Add Up – Annotated One of the ideas