Wide Teams

Episode #52: Gabe Hollombe

Oct 3, 12 • In Featured, Interviews, Podcast

In this episode, Gabe Hollombe, talks about his adventures traveling throughout Southeast Asia while working for a company based in Australia. He discusses staying connected to the Internet and home-based coworkers, traveling with coworkers, and essential equipment for the vagabond programmer. Show Notes: Gabe Hollombe (twitter / github / blog) Tutoring Australasia Pairkit.com 00:37 – Gabe Hollombe Introduction & Background 01:48 – Traveling 04:20 – Staying connected to the Internet while traveling 05:35 – Staying connected to the team back in Australia 06:30 – Nha Trang, Vietnam 08:03 – Traveling with coworkers 08:42 – Adjustment for “home team” to have coworkers working away 10:28 – Tutoring Australasia 12:11 – Lessons learned from making the change to working on-site to off-site 14:18 – Start smaller (traveling) 16:08 – Equipment for the vagabond programmer 19:55 – Key advice

The Narrating Your Work Experiment

Aug 4, 11 • In Experiences, Featured

Hans de Zwart recently finished an experiment in which he encouraged his distributed team to “narrate their work”—to issue frequent updates to the team about what they were doing. In this article, he discusses the results of the experiment. This article was originally posted on Hans’ blog, and he has kindly granted permission to reprint it here. A few months back I posted a design for an experiment on my blog. The goal of the experiment was to find out whether it would be possible to use a microblogging tool to narrate our work with the intention of making better performing virtual teams. Over the last two months, the direct team that I work in (consisting of 18 people) basically participated in the experiment in the way that it was designed: They posted constant, daily or weekly updates

Podcast #29: John Hawkins of 9Seeds LLC

Apr 27, 11 • In Featured, Interviews, Podcast

In this episode, an interview with John Hawkins, one of the founders of 9Seeds, a company that specializes in custom WordPress development. The 9Seeds team is fully dispersed, with every team member working from home. We talked about how 9Seeds came to be a distributed company, and why John intends never to set foot in a brick-and-mortar office again. Show notes: John Hawkins is @vegasgeek on Twitter 9Seeds LLC The Event Ticketing and Affiliate Manager WordPress plugins 9Seeds sponsors WordCamp conferences

8 Moments of Remote Work Zen

Mar 29, 11 • In Discussion, Experiences, Featured

For some remote workers, leaving the office behind is a choice to spend more time with family. For others, it’s a move to an environment more conducive to focus, or a way to travel the world while still making a living. Whatever your reason for working remotely, it’s good sometimes to reflect on the joys of living and working untethered to a desk. I asked eight remote workers to tell me about their moments of remote work zen—those perfect moments that make it all worthwhile. Here are their answers. —David Browning, co-founder of Two Guys —Sahil Parikh, Founder of DeskAway –Marieke Guy, blogger at Ramblings of a Remote Worker —Ligaya Turmelle —Jessica Dally, Project Manager at TechSoup –D. Keith Casey, Jr., Chief Stuff Breaker at Blue Parabola —Shane Pearlman, CEO of Shane & Peter, Inc. –John McCaffrey,

Podcast #28: Shane Pearlman of Shane & Peter

Mar 23, 11 • In Featured, Interviews, Podcast

In this episode I talk to Shane Pearlman of Shane & Peter, a fully dispersed software consultancy. We talked about recruiting the right kinds of people for a distributed team, and how to stay connected as friends as well as coworkers. Show notes: Shane Pearlman is @justlikeair on Twitter Shane & Peter Check out the Shane & Peter Lifeblog Redmine Adium Coworking Freelance Camp

Wide Links #19

Mar 18, 11 • In Links

The latest and greatest news and resources for remote workers, from all around the web. Set Up Remote Colleagues With the Apps They Need Using Ninite: Online Collaboration « Ninite has a selection of many of the most commonly used apps, including browsers, IM clients, media players, office apps, Flash, PDF readers, security tools, utilities and even some of WWD’s favorite tools, like Dropbox, Evernote and KeePass. The installer installs the most up-to-date version of the apps; running the installer again will update the apps to the latest version. iPad 2: The Best Tablet for Distributed Teams Just Got Better: Online Collaboration « I’ve talked about the importance of a “comms appliance” for remote workers; the iPad 2may just be the best device yet for that role. tags: communication videoconferencing ipad People who think

Podcast #27: Susan Tenby & Jessica Dally of TechSoup

Mar 16, 11 • In Interviews, Podcast

This podcast is a departure from the dispersed software development teams I usually cover. I interviewed Susan Tenby and Jessica Dally of TechSoup, a nonprofit focused on providing other nonprofits with the technology they need to better accomplish their missions. One way they assist nonprofits is in helping them to use Second Life, a massive on-line “virtual world”, to collaborate and build community online. I talked to Susan and Jessica about why TechSoup is a distributed organization, and why organizations are using Second Life to meet, network, and do their work. For someone who spends a lot of time doing remote collaboration, it was eye-opening for me to discover this whole new frontier of online interaction. After listening to this interview you may just be inspired to add a virtual world meeting space to your

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

Happy Holidays from Wide Teams

Dec 23, 10 • In Site News

Things are a little slow around here as I’m busy preparing for the holidays. I just wanted to take a minute to wish all the readers season’s greetings and a very happy holidays! I’ve got some great articles and podcasts lined up for the new year, but until then I’ve collected some links to guest articles you might have missed. With all the holiday hustle and bustle I haven’t had time to prepare any new articles or podcasts. In lieue of that, here are some links to guest posts I’ve done for other sites over the past months. The Seven Hats of a Successful Remote Worker: an article for WebWorkerDaily, talking about the extra responsibilities a remote worker needs to be mindful of in order to stay effective. Busting Down the Office Door about how