It’s been a strange few weeks, and we’re all adjusting to our new normals. For many product teams like our own, we are fortunate to be able to work from home and adapt our work to 100% remote. Of course it’s not your typical “work from home” by any means though. Some of you have partners or roommates sharing your space, some have children to care for (raises hand), the news cycle roars on, and the concern for our friends and family is ever-present.
Register for our Q&A session on April 3rd—12pm EST!
We’re doing our best to get through it and continue building human-centered products that solve real problems, and we think we have some advice that can help you do this too. As a team that is passionate about collaborating closely and staying tight with users, we know remote work can feel isolating. But it doesn’t have to be—let’s talk about it!
Some of the things that we’re planning on discussing in this Q&A session:
- How to adapt agile processes for remote work
- Recommended tech configurations
- How to stay close to customers and users
- Keeping communication and collaboration inclusive and effective
- Stress laughing as a coping mechanism
You’ll see these friendly faces on the Q&A:
- Hawley Brett: Hawley is a web developer at thoughtbot with experience building applications up and down the stack. She has worked on many apps for civic engagement including her time on the fully-remote team at MoveOn.org as a software engineer. Hawley is passionate about helping teams maintain inclusive communication and collaboration, especially in challenging remote environments.
- Kyle Fiedler (it me!): As Chief Design Officer, I lead the thoughtbot product design team across six different locations and four timezones. I’ve worked with mainly remote teams for the last 6 years, running design sprints, managing teams and projects, and sending animated gifs.
- German Velasco: German is a Senior Developer and team lead at thoughtbot.
Working remotely for the past 2 years, he has become a go-to source of best practices and tool recommendations for folks seeking to adapt their workflows for productive and fulfilling work-from-home scenarios that maintain an in- person, collaborative feel.
If you’re a founder or team leads who wants to better support their remote product teams or a manager struggling to facilitate productive collaboration and product progress, we’d love to have you. Or maybe you’re a designer or developer looking to adapt and optimize their workflows. Maybe you’re just seeking an hour of human interaction, virtual hugs anyone, let’s chat!
So to sum up: Will we talk about strategies for enabling productivity and working towards business goals? You betcha. Will we also talk about leading with empathy and compassion? Also yes. In fact, we believe the two should always be intertwined. Of course we also want to hear from you. What are some of the problems and struggles that you’re working through? How are you coping with the current health and economic climate?
What are you waiting for, sign up: Register for our Q&A session on April 3rd—12pm EST!
