Group items tagged

blog post by Kurt Mackey at MongoHQ, a distributed company, on working remotely and how hard it is to come up with an effective system for engaging workers. It is a work in progress. Need firewalls between personal life and work life--sound has to be managed for one thing. Mentions the blending of in-office staff and remote staff and a 'standard' for everyone to use the same collaboration tools, be available via the same channels, and produce documentation of interactions that are important to share. Has a whole section on the practical (and the tools they use to communicate) prefer async communications! Have a central work tool (Compose to record what is being produced each day); day to day communication in Hipchat, use pre-reads to meetings on a Wiki that get updated on Hackpad during the meeting, open mailing lists, Sqwiggle for face time, and Google Hangouts, too. Final recommendation is to "keep iterating" to build a remote friendly culture.

Interesting and VALUABLE links-rich how-to blog post by Wade Foster at Zapier, a distributed company, June 27, 2013 on managing remote teams. Identifies excellent resources elsewhere assembled by practitioners in remote work places. Identifies three key things: team, TOOLS (great list for work team), and processes for success. Team--hire doers, hire people you can trust, trust the people you hire, hire people who can write, hire people who are okay without a social workplace Tools--Campfire for virtual office; Sqwiggle, a persistent video chat room that takes a picture of you every 8 seconds which people can see on their computers and instant video chat; email, Trello for joint to-do list; GitHub for issues and pull requests; iDoneThis for daily digest of accomplishments--notes that "it is great for personal use as well because it can help build habits." Also Chrome profiles, LastPass Enterprise, Draft for easily versioning drafts, and Google Docs, Hello sign (for signatures without hassle of scanning, etc.), and Google Talk Processes--everyone does support on regular schedule to stay close to customers; a culture of shipping, weekly hangouts, weekly learning, monthly one on ones, culture of daily feedback

Mark Athitakis at AssociationsNow on supporting remote workers through regular communication and involvement to engage them more effectively

video lesson on finding remote jobs by Mike Gutman

Nice blog by Danielle Holly, Common Impact, on engaging remote employees and skilled volunteers with good sources cited in the article, May 17, 2016. If everyone is remote, everyone is equal, but skilled management is still needed.

all about why remote working is the way to go with new book Remote

article on what to call remote workers--work in place

interesting post by Marla Gottschalk, August 20, 2014, on working remotely and addressing loneliness.

Interesting article on value of remote video exams

Post by sara Sutton Fell, February 2, 2015 on working from home. Good guidance on finding and applying for part-time and full-time jobs that are remote, telecommuting, home-based, distributed or "geographically neutral."

companies offering remote jobs the most often

shows how remote work can be enlivened with family participation

The "work from home" phenomenon is thoroughly explored in this illuminating new book from bestselling 37signals founders Fried and Hansson, who point to the surging trend of employees working from home (and anywhere else) and explain the challenges and unexpected benefits. Most important, they show why - with a few controversial exceptions such as Yahoo -- more businesses will want to promote this new model of getting things done.

How Slack will become a centralized integration point for many functions, NYT, Farhad Manjoo, Bits, December 15, 2015, making it more possible for workers to work remotely.

This article by Matthew Lynch in Education Week, January 8, 2014 speaks to the four ways that technology has changed K-12 education. They are 1) collaboration 2) research online 3) remote learning and 4) teacher prep. Seems that with a few wording changes, the same could be said about digital technology's impact on the workforce. Is the workforce ready?

short video (about 6 minutes) showing underwater robot built under open source (publish and share all code online for others to adapt) in a garage. remote operated vehicle. 1,000 times cheaper than vehicle used to explore Titanic. Underwater vehicles used in oil exploration, construction, etc. set up website with discussion forums to bring in tips from others; slow at first, then hobbyists and professional ocean engineers started showing up; people wanted kits, they used Kickstarter to raise $20,000, raised over $100k in 2 hours, then had to start small manufacturing. now they have ocean explorers all over the globe.

Paul Lemberg writes about delegating--five components--give the job to someone who can get it done; communicate precise conditions of satisfaction; work out a plan; set up a structure for accountability; and get buy-in. Believe these components are even more important for remote workers and volunteers.

local Tampa woman finds good job on FlexJobs and telecommutes now

how millennials do their work from wherever they are in the world, Jules Schroeder, author in the Under 30 section of Forbes

from Zenhabits.net. Although from 2008, it has a great list of how to stay healthy when working from home. Most of this list can translate to office too!