---
title: 'New online Q&A: Being human in the absence of humans'
teaser: 'Join a panel of our experts as they answer your pre-submitted questions and
  share favorite tools, tips, and more for remote working in these challenging times.

  '
tags: remote,human,process,design,development,virtual hugs
author: Kyle Fiedler
published_on: 2020-03-26
---

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!]

[Register for our Q&A session on April 3rd—12pm EST!]: https://info.thoughtbot.com/being-human-in-the-absence-of-humans