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joakin/remoties-notes.md

Created June 16, 2015 07:43
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We're all remoties notes
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remoties-notes.md
  • Seeing a lot of faces/facial expressions is very useful
  • A/V meetings are faster than audio-only conf calls
  • Proper office space and separation helps
  • Use calendar for meeting. Block your busy times.
  • Default to muted if there's unexpected sounds around (kids, pets, etc)
  • Meetings
    • Aggressively limit them
      • 18people 14cities nonadjacent timezones with only 3 meetings (30m) a week everybody was up to date, finished by mid day ¿tuesday?
    • How:
      • Be very clear about who needs to attend and who's welcome (curious)
      • If you invite people to a late/inconvenient meeting they tend to accept and not ask if they are actually needed
      • Default 30minutes instead of 1 hour.
      • Schedule meetings near each other.
      • Uninterrupted work days are important.
      • Be punctual.
      • Be conscient of timezones. Use tools like http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html
      • Take notes before, during and after the meeting in something like etherpad.
      • They use etherpad collaborativelly (it sucks to be the one jotting down)
        • Helps with missunderstandings and agreements.
        • Wiki syntax in etherpad? Paste finished etherpad into wikis.
      • Optional people read meeting notes some times.
      • Private chat & audio+video: everybody visible to everyone.
        • (Hangouts is hard to see sometimes because of thumbnails)
      • Laptop cameras not wallmounted cameras.
      • Agree where we track communications - then be consistent
      • Read that private chat/channel scrollback internal to the team to learn what happened. Small, very focused, only the team. Gitter? Slack? Hipchat?
      • If it is not documented it didn't happened.
      • The bug is the single source of truth. (phab)
    • Moderator:
      • Visual cues for people wanting to speak.
      • "coming-to-meetings-just-in-case"-itis
        • decision-making to separate meeting with all stakeholders
        • unscheduled topics without the intended stakeholders can hurt
      • have people who know the area lead meeting
      • rotate moderator roles, different perspectives=different improvements
      • everyone can learn how to run a meeting
  • Emails:
    • Inbox
      • Diff TO you from IMPORTANT person -> Red
      • Diff TO you from others -> Orange
      • from IMPORTANT with CC you -> Green
      • Others black.
      • Practice inbox 0
  • Private team chat
    • slack/skype/hangouts/irc/hipchat/huddle/irccloud has to be ubiquitous (every team member uses it)
    • Important: Logs are saved and searchable.
    • ettiquete:
      • be clear with questions: ex: quick non-urgent question about...
      • be clear with answers. ex: how urgent is this, i've got 3 other things to do before i get to that.
  • Conflict:
    • Different, usually harder
    • If you've said something 3 times and it is not getting through try a different medium, upgrade (video call)
    • Super conflict:
      • say out loud assume i am and you are a professional
      • are we solving the same problem
    • Harder to see the conflict
  • workweeks (off-sites)
    • every entire group meets face to face for a week every 3 months
    • find cheapest places, change locations
    • plan the dates in advance
    • even locals go to hotel if there are
    • events:
      • lightning talks
      • visit tourist stuff
      • bars

site: oduinn.com twitter: @joduinn

slides http://oduinn.com/images/we_are_all_remoties_latest.pdf

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