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.

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.

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