Effective Telepresence & Remote Collaboration

Meetup Agenda

• Effective Meetings

• English is not English

• The “I don’t know” Culture

• Confirming Deliverables

• Hiring remote employees

Effective Meetings

- Rule #1

“Unless the meeting organizer can fire you, decline all meetings without an agenda.”

Requiring an agenda forces the organizer to clarify the reason and

often results in not needing a meeting at all.

Agenda Objectives

• Allow participants to prepare

• Can help reduce non-essential attendees

• Help the organizer forecast meeting length

• Still not going to happen, huh?

0

300

600

900

1200

Number of Attendees

Estimate $100 per hour per attendee

- Rule #2

“All meetings should have a designated recorder.”

A meeting summary serves as a ‘receipt’ to justify the use of company funds.

Recorder Responsibilities

• Attendees

• Topics discussed (hint: should be agenda)

• Action items assigned

• Who owns each item

• When the item is due

Effective Meetings Summary

• Decline undefined meetings

• Require an agenda

• Designated note taker

• Meeting summary documents action items

Care to bring a rubber and

bang me up at 6am?

Tips for Effective Communication

• Avoid slang terms

• Shorter sentences are better

• Ask for confirmation

• Get/Put it in Writing

• Establish short timelines (Agile, anyone?)

— Marjorie Brody, founder & CEO of BRODY Professional Development

“Communication is the message received, not the message sent.”

93% of all communication is non-verbal

Not really, but it’s still a lot.

Body Language Tone

Facial Expression Ambient Noise

are all lost.

You Company Cultureand the Land of Idontknow

A New Manifesto

• It’s ok to:

• say “I don’t know”

• ask for clarity

• say you don’t understand

• ask what acronyms stand for

• forget things

• depend on the team

• ask for help

• not know everything

• say “No”

• make mistakes

• offer feedback

• challenge things

• say “Yes”

Confirming Deliverables• Ask for confirmation of your request

• Stated back to you in their own words

• Define a “show me where you’re at” checkpoint

• Stated in time, not progress

• Use shorter, clearly defined tasks until a good working relationship is established

Standups

• Effective for dev work

• Less effective for ops

• Meeting does not persist outside of standup

Shift HandoffStatus of current issues

Current impact Who owns the follow up

Visibility outside of meeting

Hiring Remote Employees

The Programming Task

Being a Remote

Employeehttp://www.donnfelker.com/

working-remote/

You’re already remote.

Four hours overlap

Have a dedicated working area.

The company must embrace a remote work

environment.

Use the tools.

Get together.

Recap:

• Effective Meetings

• English is not English

• The “I don’t know” Culture

• Confirming Deliverables

• Hiring remote employees

Will Button @wfbutton