

Building and Managing Remote Teams (presentation) - gregarious
http://gregario.us/2012/07/out-of-sight-peace-of-mind/

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andrewcooke
i was reading _peopleware_ recently, and was surprised how much of what they
mention comes "for free" with remote teams. there's a whole pile of "give your
employees control of their environment" is a no-brainer when remote. of
course, there are also things that become much harder...

one hack i found, which has _really_ helped me a couple of times now, is using
a tablet and pen (wacom bamboo, on linux) on google meetup, and screen-sharing
while drawing. this lets me "explain while sketching on a piece of paper" (the
two big wins were a complex technical/maths issue and a gui/interaction
problem). i also used it for a talk, which i think went well (a small,
distributed company technical talk - worked something like a blackboard, which
is a bit old school, but i had pre-drawn diagrams too - we even considered
putting the recording online, but there was "frank discussion" at various
points during the talk that ruled that out).

and, of course, agree completely on the "communication before skills" thing
(well, you need both).

[some notes on getting bamboo working on linux -
[http://isti.bitbucket.org/2012/04/09/wacom-bamboo-on-
linux.h...](http://isti.bitbucket.org/2012/04/09/wacom-bamboo-on-linux.html)]

ps could you email me when the talk is online? andrew@acooke.org - thanks.

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gregarious
That's a really useful trick Andrew.

We often get the benefit of that while sitting next to each other - the whole
"let's go to the whiteboard" idea.

I still carry paper with me almost all the time and then take a photo of the
page on my phone and mail it off to whoever needs it.

Will mail you when I know the link!

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Tashtego
I really wish there was a transcript or video. The better the presentation,
the less useful the slide deck is on its own.

~~~
gregarious
It was recorded, but waiting for them to publish the video.

If you download the file, however, my notes are in there too.

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timedoctor
Building my entire business around the idea of remote teams and there are few
valid reasons why you should have an office and hire locally versus hire in
any city or any country around the world

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erikb
As ppt behind your discussion this might be good, but for itself there is
nearly no content. What a pitty.

~~~
gregarious
While it's always best to get the video - and hopefully that will be available
soon - I still think there's plenty to be gleaned from the slides.

Also, I have a few extra notes on the slides in the downloaded version.

Hopefully, I will get a chance to expand on all of these ideas in my blog in
the next few months, if not sooner.

