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I am not sure if I agree with the 'physical proximity' piece. You can create that same level of trust and group work environment in virtual office environment t

I am not sure if I agree with the 'physical proximity' piece. You can create that same level of trust and group work environment in virtual office environment through the use of technology (IM, video conf, emails, calls). The growth in telecommuters have created a need for stellar tools to help people collaborate and create bonds even when they are not physically close to each other.

zackattack 16y ago
I evidently explained that poorly. The idea was that if you're going to a meeting in a building at work, then you might arrive early. You might spend a few minutes chatting with a coworker who also arrived early. This "irrelevant" social chatter helps build a relationship, and might be less likely to occur if you're telecommuting, because then your conversations might be forced to be purposeful. You no longer can transfer information over casual watercooler breaks.
- mbrubeck 16y ago
  I work remotely for a very distributed organization (Mozilla), and still get a lot of informal interaction. The key is to have several different communication venues with different standards and expectations. Discussion in Bugzilla is fairly technical and work-oriented. Discussion on mailing lists allows for more advocacy. IRC allows for more chatty, non-work-related talk, and some IRC channels have different rules than others. We also use Twitter, private email, internal web forums, internal and external wikis, Rypple, etc...
  - swernli 16y ago
    I think that's exactly the point: while those myriad of technologies allow you to mitigate some of the downsides of distance, they still don't have the accidental factor that random hallway conversations have. I can walk by someone having a cool conversation in the break room and join in. I can have lunch with my coworkers and seamsly switch back forth between work discussions and personal ones. And I don't have to follow anything, check any mailboxes, or type any responses arbitrarily limited to a certain number of characters.
francoisdevlin 16y ago
Never underestimate what you can learn at the water cooler by accident.

zackattack 16y ago

I evidently explained that poorly. The idea was that if you're going to a meeting in a building at work, then you might arrive early. You might spend a few minutes chatting with a coworker who also arrived early. This "irrelevant" social chatter helps build a relationship, and might be less likely to occur if you're telecommuting, because then your conversations might be forced to be purposeful. You no longer can transfer information over casual watercooler breaks.

mbrubeck 16y ago
I work remotely for a very distributed organization (Mozilla), and still get a lot of informal interaction. The key is to have several different communication venues with different standards and expectations. Discussion in Bugzilla is fairly technical and work-oriented. Discussion on mailing lists allows for more advocacy. IRC allows for more chatty, non-work-related talk, and some IRC channels have different rules than others. We also use Twitter, private email, internal web forums, internal and external wikis, Rypple, etc...
- swernli 16y ago
  I think that's exactly the point: while those myriad of technologies allow you to mitigate some of the downsides of distance, they still don't have the accidental factor that random hallway conversations have. I can walk by someone having a cool conversation in the break room and join in. I can have lunch with my coworkers and seamsly switch back forth between work discussions and personal ones. And I don't have to follow anything, check any mailboxes, or type any responses arbitrarily limited to a certain number of characters.

francoisdevlin 16y ago

Never underestimate what you can learn at the water cooler by accident.