RailsConf Wrap-Up

It’s been a whirlwind week. It was only Sunday night when I decided to accelerate my plans and launch WideTeams.com at RailsConf 2010. The subsequent days have been exhausting and amazing.

I roamed the halls of RailsConf in the Wide Teams “Phoney Hat”, talking to people about remote work and distributed teams. I’m overwhelmed by the responses I received. So many people were eager to talk to me about their experiences with remote work. I recorded over a dozen interviews with developers and managers who are either working with dispersed teams now or who have done so in the past. I talked to members of two-person teams and fifty-person teams. I spoke to teams who are all located in the same general area, and teams that are spread across the globe. I was even able to record a round-table discussion on distributed teams held at the B’MoreOnRails-hosted BohConf.

My biggest takeaway from the experience was that WideTeams.com needs to be about YOU, the remote working community. When I first had the idea for the site I figured that I would share what I had learned about distributed teams, and have the occasional guest post or interview. After seeing firsthand how excited people are to share their knowledge and experience, I’m convinced this site should be much more strongly community-focused.

I’ll be thinking about what that means for the direction of the site, but I want your feedback too. Some ideas for additions to the site I’ve had are:

• A public wiki dedicated to remote work
• User forums
• A mailing list associated with the site

Please comment and let me know what you’d like to see in this space. It’s clear to me after RailsConf that a space for the remote working community to gather and share their insights is overdue. With your ideas and help this will become that space!

Also, keep watching the site for new content. Over the weekend I’ll be working on  converting the first of the RailsConf interviews into a podcast-ready form. Expect the Wide Teams podcast to debut early next week!