The Importance of Face-to-Face Time

Open source projects have shown that teams can be incredibly productive even when spread across different timezones and continents. Companies have learned from this and are increasingly allowing their employees to work from home, wherever that may be. This allows them to attract the very best developers, designers, salespeople, executives, etc., regardless of their living situation.

But a far-flung team comes with a cost. Purely electronic communication, whether via email, chat, bug trackers, or even video conferencing, easily leads to misinterpretation, stifled thoughts, nit-picking, lack of camaraderie, and worse. When all your communication is textual, it's far too easy to assume the worst in others, rather than the best.

Don't despair! There's an easy solution: face-to-face time. Talking and hanging out in person for even a few days reminds us that we're all warm-blooded humans with good intentions and puts our interactions back on the right track. Come hear three stories about how I learned this and put it to good use at Apple, in the WebKit open source project, and at GitHub.