+1 on everything said thus far re: telecommute. My company has < 10 employees, no office, and we're spread out over four states. We use some tools already mentioned plus GoToMeeting.
-- John Bliss - http://about.me/jbliss On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 2:20 AM, Sean Corfield <[email protected]>wrote: > > On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 7:15 AM, Mark A. Kruger <[email protected]> > wrote: > > When we mad telecommuting available and stopped worrying about relocation > > things got a lot easier for us. > > I'll +100 on this. > > At Broadchoice, we figured out who we'd like to work for us and > conducted screening interviews, then flew in our top picks (from the > list of candidates who had expressed interest) for a two-day > mini-conference with the full company team - and we made the > candidates present to the team! We had no plans to make anyone > relocate - we already let people telecommute a few days a week even if > they lived locally. > > At World Singles, most of the company were telecommuting when I joined > because we're a (small) global company. We quickly gave up the office > in So. Cal. and let everyone work from home full time. Now, when we > hire someone, location is simply not an issue: if you're right for us, > we'll hire you (and you get to work in PJs or whatever you want). We > plan to have an all-hands company meeting once or twice a year and fly > everyone in for the event, but we rely on Yammer! and Unfuddle / git > and mailing lists and Skype and iChat and so on. We can pair remotely > as engineers whenever we want - not as good as pairing face-to-face > but it works well enough. > > > We play to these strengths whenever we can. We provide a model that is > > focused on the work performed not hours at a desk. We make their families > > important to us. We provide them with a steady flow of positive > > reinforcement. Out of a staff of 18 nearly half are now remotely working > in > > various parts of the country. > > +1 on all of that. > > > 1) How do you develop community and facilitate knowledge sharing with a > > remote staff. > > Regular interaction via Skype, mailing lists, wikis. > > > 2) How do you manage meetings and stakeholder interaction. > > Keep them to a minimum - and use video conference calls when you do them at > all. > > > 3) What technology is the most helpful with a remote staff. > > Keep all your resources in the cloud - use a hosted bug tracker / > version control system. Use IM a LOT. Use Skype (with video). Use > iChat (chat, audio, video, screen sharing - Mac rocks!). > > > 4) How do you overcome the hesitancy of potential customers who are > > uncomfortable with a remote staff. > > Seriously? You still encounter this? I've worked remotely for > customers for years - I've *never* seen resistance to this. > -- > Sean A Corfield -- (904) 302-SEAN > An Architect's View -- http://corfield.org/ > World Singles, LLC. -- http://worldsingles.com/ > Railo Technologies, Inc. -- http://www.getrailo.com/ > > "Perfection is the enemy of the good." > -- Gustave Flaubert, French realist novelist (1821-1880) > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/message.cfm/messageid:345563 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-talk/unsubscribe.cfm
