Summary: Part 1 of 2 – I ran into Elia Albarran, Four Kitchens' Operations Manager ... ahem "Funmaster", in the inspiring atmosphere of BADCamp 2014. She mentioned she'd read my blog post 10 Tips for Success as a Remote Employee; we started exchanging tips and ideas until I basically yelled, "Stop! I need to get this on camera for the podcast!" She graciously agreed and brought along two Four Kitchens developers for the session, too: Taylor Smith and Matt Grill. In this episode, I kick off with developers Matt and Taylor talking about Drupal itself, then we get into some tips and tricks they use to keep on track with work and maintaining healthy communication as members of remote teams. In part 2, I speak with Elia Albarran about the manager's perspective on running great teams, whether mixed in-house/remote or all remote. Check out that episode and post (and my original post and the comments there) for a lot more great, practical information on this topic that concerns so many of us in the tech industry today. Related posts on Acquia.com 10 Tips for Success as a Remote Employee – blog post by Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire Working on Remote Teams – the Developers – Acquia Podcast 182 with Four Kitchens developers Taylor Smith and Matt Grill Helping Remote Teams Work - The Manager – Acquia Podcast 180 with Elia Albarran, Four Kitchens Operations Manager Building a great remote team, helping clients & giving back - Acquia Podcast 193 with Acquia Global Support team members Daniel Blomqvist and Henk Beld Personal productivity, survival, and sanity tips for remotes (Almost) over-communicate as a remote – jam & Matt: I mention that I will write an extra email or make an extra call to keep my team and boss up-to-date with what I am doing to keep things in balance. Matt adds, "Even if you think that a person won't find it valuable [now], send it anyway. They can potentially parse it at their own rate." Get out of your house, set a schedule – Taylor: "Sometimes I work from home, but I also made an arrangement with a local non-profit to share office space. Having to drive into downtown ... I made that my goal for the day: get dressed, get ready to go, and I go to work," adding a change of space to one where work should happen. "When I work from home, I miss having people around." Separate work and home-distractions - Matt: "I'll work in very defined chunks of time. That makes it easy to get things done. Not pick one task for all day, then you lose focus. Segment your time, that can be beneficial. I am at home, and there are tasks and responsibilities that might come up. I shut all that out and ignore it all till I can condense all those activities down into a break in between a large chunk of working." Discipline ... Get dressed (seriously) – jam & Matt: Imposing discipline on yourself help a lot of people, whether it simply means getting dressed at all, going to a different room, starting at a particular time, or what have you. Matt points out, "Four Kitchens has always had a pants rule. Wear pants in the office, please. I was working in a big office before I started working remote and I kept that same schedule: I wake up; I take a shower; I eat breakfast every morning ... and put on pants, obviously ... and I just start working. I don't like staying in my pajamas all day. That feels icky." :-) Work when you want to – Taylor: "I felt like [being remote] opened up more opportunities to work when I wanted to. If I felt like I could work from home, no one was tracking when I was and wasn't there. Some mornings, it's just hard to get going and I'd rather go outside and take a walk. Or some evenings, you're feeling really motivated and I know I can get a whole lot done and I'll sit at my desk and turn out a whole bunch of work for a project in the middle of the...
