i was reading peopleware recently, and was surprised how much of what they mention comes "for free" with remote teams. there's a whole pile of "give your employees control of their environment" is a no-brainer when remote. of course, there are also things that become much harder...

one hack i found, which has really helped me a couple of times now, is using a tablet and pen (wacom bamboo, on linux) on google meetup, and screen-sharing while drawing. this lets me "explain while sketching on a piece of paper" (the two big wins were a complex technical/maths issue and a gui/interaction problem). i also used it for a talk, which i think went well (a small, distributed company technical talk - worked something like a blackboard, which is a bit old school, but i had pre-drawn diagrams too - we even considered putting the recording online, but there was "frank discussion" at various points during the talk that ruled that out).

and, of course, agree completely on the "communication before skills" thing (well, you need both).

[some notes on getting bamboo working on linux - http://isti.bitbucket.org/2012/04/09/wacom-bamboo-on-linux.h...]

ps could you email me when the talk is online? andrew@acooke.org - thanks.

That's a really useful trick Andrew.

We often get the benefit of that while sitting next to each other - the whole "let's go to the whiteboard" idea.

I still carry paper with me almost all the time and then take a photo of the page on my phone and mail it off to whoever needs it.

Will mail you when I know the link!

I really wish there was a transcript or video. The better the presentation, the less useful the slide deck is on its own.

It was recorded, but waiting for them to publish the video.

If you download the file, however, my notes are in there too.

Building my entire business around the idea of remote teams and there are few valid reasons why you should have an office and hire locally versus hire in any city or any country around the world

As ppt behind your discussion this might be good, but for itself there is nearly no content. What a pitty.

While it's always best to get the video - and hopefully that will be available soon - I still think there's plenty to be gleaned from the slides.

Also, I have a few extra notes on the slides in the downloaded version.

Hopefully, I will get a chance to expand on all of these ideas in my blog in the next few months, if not sooner.