Lean Startup

Office Optional Group Q&A #2 by Lean Startup

Office Optional Group Q&A #1 by Lean Startup

Hiring and onboarding new employees in person is among any company’s biggest challenges; doing those things remotely adds in several layers of difficulty. Frazier Miller, COO at Articulate, a 120-person, fully distributed e-learning software firm, will talk about what his company has learned in their 10 years of bringing on new employees. From screening candidates to establishing connections on a new employee’s first day, he’ll discuss specific steps you can take to ensure these critical tasks flow smoothly.

Office Optional Group Q&A #4 by Lean Startup

Office Optional Group Q&A #3 by Lean Startup

Pair programming is a key approach to simultaneously increasing focus, improving code, boosting morale and generating team cohesion, among other benefits. But, like most methods of close collaboration, it’s predicated on the idea that two people are sitting right next to each other. Joe Moore of Pivotal Labs–a leader in pair programming–will look at how the human interaction elements of the process can be used to effectively integrate remote team members into HQ or co-located teams, and can thus be applied to many kinds of intense, virtual collaboration.

Many of the human challenges of remote setups are the same no matter the size, age or type of organization. But large, long-established entities face particular issues in introducing and encouraging virtual-work arrangements. Jared Goralnick, Innovation Fellow at the Department of Health and Human Services, Founder & CEO at AwayFind, and as of recently, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft Lync, will discuss the key elements to focus on when encouraging distributed teamwork in an organization with thousands or even hundreds of thousands of employees who are accustomed to working onsite

Kailey Howell will show how McBeard Media, a 50-person, fully distributed creative agency uses Mural.ly to collaborate on content creation, including workflow, copy, graphics, layout and more.

By nearly all measurements, remote work is growing rapidly. At the same time, leading companies are building new headquarters to bring their workers together. What do the trends of “work anywhere” and “everyone work here” have in common? And what are the implications for the places we work and live in? Urban designer Laura Crescimano will look at the trends for and questions raised by an increasingly distributed workforce.

Nicholas McGill will show how Heroik, a consulting firm, uses Popplet for collaboration among up to 25 people.

We’re all familiar with the idea of remote, outsourced functions like customer service and web development. But a growing number of companies match workers around the globe with microtasks, allowing for a massively distributed workforce. With five million contributors from 208 countries, CrowdFlower is a leader in this area. Lukas Biewald, CEO, will share perspective on what it takes to work with millions of people you’ve never met.

Being part of a kickass team is one of the great benefits of distributed work. But it’s hard to keep track of things like what everyone else is working on and who’s out on vacation, let alone tackle how you can get more done together. In this talk, Patti Chan will share insights from Intridea, a 50-person, 5-year-old, 100% distributed company that uses a number of third-party apps–but has also built its own internal communications tools. She’ll explore: What’s best left to third-party products? How do you know you’ve hit a wall with third-party apps and need to build your own? How do you think about developing tools if you’re not a dev shop? How do you ensure internal buy-in for new tools?

Opening Remarks: Office Optional | Sarah Milstein by Lean Startup

When StudySoup implemented a mandatory, daily virtual standup meeting for its team of {number}, it saw a monumental shift in both the relationships between team members and their progress on projects. CEO Sieva Kozinsky will explain how the calls are structured, how long they last, who talks, the system for taking notes and how it’s transformed the company.

Peter Armstrong, founder of Dashcube, will show us a new communications tool.

When you have a central office, remote workers can wind up feeling uninformed, disempowered and disconnected. But they absolutely don’t have to have those experiences. Paul Hepworth, VP of Engineering at UserTesting, an 87-person company with more than a dozen remote workers, will talk about the very practical things you can do to ensure that remote team members can “see” into the office and are as connected and informed as co-located workers. In addition to interpersonal processes, he’ll also talk about cheap hardware setups that make a big difference.

People on distributed teams often say, “Working remotely is great for heads-down tasks, but collaborating remotely–especially on creative work–is really hard.” You’ve probably said that yourself. So how can we improve distributed collaboration in virtual meetings? Teryn Rikert, a workplace strategist with Steelcase, will break down the different modes of collaboration, helping us understand the key behaviors, interactions and tools we can use to support them over distance.

Is having a distributed workforce just a matter of letting people work wherever they like? It’s tempting to think so. In fact, once you let employees work remotely, the risks of legal employment, financial, and work-related misunderstandings amplify. Steven Yee, with more than 16 years of HR consulting and training experience, will talk about effective approaches and will provide examples of HR solutions redefined for virtual teams.

Post-it Notes and whiteboards are basic office collaboration tools, supporting useful, well-established processes for group brainstorming. But when you’re not physically next to the same wall, the effectiveness of these tools crumbles. William Donnell, Founder of Sodium Halogen, an experience-design consulting firm, often works with groups of up to eight and will share the techniques he’s developed for ensuring lively, engaged virtual brainstorming.

The Secrets of Successfully Working from Home Lynne d Johnson@lynneluvah LYNNEDJOHNSON.COM Elisa Batista @elisabatista MOMSRISING.ORG Raina Kumra @rainakumra JUGGERNAUT Keith Fahlgren @abdelazer SAFARI BOOKS ONLINE What happens when your “remote office” is a corner of your living room, and your colocated coworkers are a large mutt and a four-year-old human–or you have no colocated coworkers at all? This panel will explore approaches that make working from home actually work. From physical setups, to social arrangements, to personal productivity and more, this discussion will plumb topics that many of think about every day.