The Wide Teams Podcast
A weekly podcast featuring interviews with people who are making dispersed teams work day by day.
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Subscribe in iTunes04Aug2011
The Narrating Your Work Experiment
Hans de Zwart recently finished an experiment in which he encouraged his distributed team to "narrate their work"—to issue frequent updates to the team about what they were doing. In this article, he discusses the results of the experiment. This article was originally posted on Hans' blog, and he has kindly granted permission to reprint it here.
Read more...View Comments (1)23Mar2011
Podcast #28: Shane Pearlman of Shane & Peter
In this episode I talk to Shane Pearlman of Shane & Peter, a fully dispersed software consultancy. We talked about recruiting the right kinds of people for a distributed team, and how to stay connected as friends as well as coworkers.
Read more...View Comments (2)21Mar2011
6 Ways Remote Workers Can Communicate Effectively
Remote workers such as telecommuters and freelancers often face the challenge of little- to no-face time with team members. Lack of in-person communication means one loses access and the non-verbal cues of team members, such as facial expression, body language and sometimes tone of voice. As a result, remote workers face challenges such as misinterpretation of information, lack of information due to delay in response, and low team spirit due to limited personal interaction with team members.
Read more...View Comments (1)16Mar2011
Podcast #27: Susan Tenby & Jessica Dally of TechSoup
This podcast is a departure from the dispersed software development teams I usually cover. I interviewed Susan Tenby and Jessica Dally of TechSoup, a nonprofit focused on providing other nonprofits with the technology they need to better accomplish their missions. One way they assist nonprofits is in helping them to use Second Life, a massive on-line "virtual world", to collaborate and build community online.
I talked to Susan and Jessica about why TechSoup is a distributed organization, and why organizations are using Second Life to meet, network, and do their work. For someone who spends a lot of time doing remote collaboration, it was eye-opening for me to discover this whole new frontier of online interaction. After listening to this interview you may just be inspired to add a virtual world meeting space to your own remote collaboration tool box.
14Mar2011
Encouraging Involvement in Distributed Teams
One of the biggest challenges in remote work is simply making sure everyone has a strong sense of involvement. In this article Steven Baker, a veteran of dispersed agile software development teams, shares his experiences and recommendations for keeping the communication, camaraderie, and personal connections alive in a distributed setting.
Read more...View Comments (1)08Mar2011
Podcast #26: Sahil Parikh of DeskAway.com
In this episode I talked to Sahil Parikh of DeskAway.com, a web-based collaboration tool for distributed teams. This is another episode recovered from near-disastrous technical malfunction, and as a result all of my audio has been re-dubbed. Thankfully, Sahil's insights into he advantages of a dispersed team have been fully preserved.
Read more...View Comments (1)25Feb2011
Wide Links #18
Been a while since I did one of these... here's a fresh helping of remote-work related links from all around the web.
Read more...Leave a Comment15Feb2011
Podcast #24: Derek Wade
In this episode, a conversation with Derek Wade, a collaboration expert and Team Coach at Kumido Adaptive Systems. We talk about building "high-gravity" distributed teams, work-scapes, and the benefits of simple, free-form tools for collaboration.
Read more...View Comments (1)08Feb2011
Podcast #23: Interview with Rob Dempsey of LifeOfTheFreelancer.com (Part 2 of 2)
Part two of a conversation between Rob Dempsey of LifeOfTheFreelancer.com and myself. In this part we dig into the intersection of freelancing and distributed teams: the phenomenon of ad-hoc teams composed of independent consultants who come together to work on a specific project. If you're a freelancer trying to figure out how you can take on bigger jobs, you need to check out this episode.
Read more...View Comments (1)13Dec2010
5, 6, 7, 8, who do we appreciate?
In a dispersed team it is more important than ever to make a habit of showing appreciation for a job well done.
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