Wide Teams

Podcast #41: Jonathan Wallace of Highgroove Studios

Jul 18, 12 • In Featured, Interviews, Podcast

Jonathan Wallace, of Highgroove Studios, talks about the team’s management philosophy, ROWE, and why it works, and how the concepts of overcommunication and summarization are extremely important practices when working within a distributed team. Show Notes: Highgroove Studios blog.jonathanrwallace.com Twitter: @jonathanwallace @highgroove 00:52 – Jonathan Wallace Introduction 01:14 – Distributed Team 01:58 – Becoming Distributed 07:43 – Being “there” versus getting things done: Results Only (ROWE) 11:50 – Work Flow while Working from Home 14:42 – Challenges of Remote Work 18:00 – “Overcommunicating” 20:30 – Summarizing 23:44 – Advice for Remote 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

Wide Teams Podcast #20: Interview with Thomaz Leite

Nov 30, 10 • In Interviews, Podcast

In this episode, a discussion with software developer Thomaz Leite, who lives in Missouri and collaborate with team members in Michigan, Portugal, and Brazli. He introduced me to an new Open Source VoiP tool that competes with Skype, and talked about doing pair programming with remote team members

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

Conquering “The Fear”: 5 pointers for stress-free management of remote teams

Nov 15, 10 • In Basics, Practices

Managing a dispersed team for the first time can be pretty scary. How will you know if everyone is doing their jobs and staying on schedule? Here are some tips that will have you breathing easy again. Here’s the situation: you’re leading a dispersed team for the first time. You’ve had a kickoff meetup so that everyone could meet face to face. You’ve assembled your collaboration tools. You’ve scheduled daily standup meeting at a time when everyone is available. But now the project has started, and you’re starting to get anxious. What is everyone doing right now? Are they working? Do they really understand their tasks? Are they on schedule? Are they being distracted by their families? Don’t look now, but you’ve got The Fear. It’s a creeping anxiety that affects many managers who have

Meetings and Distributed Introverts

Nov 5, 10 • In Experiences, Practices

For an introvert, any meeting can be trying. In this guest article, contributor Chris Strom talks about how distributed meetings are especially taxing for those of an introverted bent, and some of his strategies for coping. I am a strong introvert. As with most introverts, I lose energy when I interact with people. Meetings, in particular, drain me. Since they are a staple of a professional career, I have built up something of a tolerance for meetings. Remote meetings, however, continue to confound me. Everything about remote meetings saps more energy than the in-person equivalent. By itself, any one thing does not amount to much. But, by the end of a meeting, I am completely drained. I have no fight left. I care more about reaching the end than reaching consensus. In my experience, eye

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 [email protected] on Twitter and blogs at http://trevmex.com/ Nick Gauthier of SmartLogic Solutions [email protected] on Twitter Chris Strom [email protected]_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 [email protected] on Twitter Brian Glusman of ENJYN [email protected] 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!

Ten Reasons to Assemble a Dispersed Team

Nov 1, 10 • In Philosophy

I’ve talked a lot about the “how” of dispersed teams on this site, but what about the “why”? Here are ten reasons to build a geographically distributed team. You’re trying to build a lean startup, creating the first version of your product without taking any VC funding. You’re working after-hours while still doing freelance work to pay the bills. You can’t very well ask your team members to pick up and move to your location – or even commute to an office – while they are working purely for equity. Remote collaboration may be the only way to get the talent you need while staying on a shoestring budget. You are building a software company in one of the great tech hub cities, and you’ve realized it’s hard to find talent at any price because

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