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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
by 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 agoI 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.