To work together despite the distance: the history of the emergence Remote.st
Hello! About 2 weeks ago on Habre the article appeared "1000 words about a real experience of remote work". The article described our experience of remote work preceding the establishment of the service Remote.st.
Today will tell about the reasons and the history of the emergence Remote.st
Of the 11 years of his career about half the time I'm working in distributed teams. And I believe that to work in the same room at the same table much more effectively than when a team scattered across the world. Much quicker and easier to approach the person and ask you a question, or to discuss the problem than trying to do it via text chat (we use Jaconda.im), or call in Skype or Hangouts.
But the reality is that in a world more and more people work remotely. And I feel this trend for yourself. My team shopium.ua consisted of professional developers scattered all over Ukraine. Creative Agency my partner the Remote.st (Kir Gorshkov) for 4 years wins the tenders and makes the coolest ads such companies as Coca-Cola, Panasonic, Roshen, TetraPak, Hyundai, and they have an office used only for meetings with clients and staff so as to freely move in the world. The previous six months I spent on Koh Samui in Thailand, where he worked with his team.
I always knew that in distributed teams primarily affect the communication. It is difficult to provide the necessary density of the exchange of information. Everyone knows that when talking 1-on-1 up to 80% of information is transmitted nonverbally. When working as the same. There are many small, not very important pieces of information that individually are not worth it for them to "convene a meeting" in Hangouts, but knowing that you can do a better job.
Redmine, Basecamp, Megaplan, Teamlab, Bitrix24, KanbanFlow, Trello, they are all focused on the left hemisphere of the brain, and is structurally preserved and shows the current status of the project. But there is very little daily project management tools which are aimed at the right hemisphere: non-verbal information, intuition, emotions, relationships, dreams.
So, at the intersection of these facts, the idea Remote.st
What is Remote.st
In Remote.st we tried not to indulge in the skeuomorph to bring the feeling of working in one room.
Entering the room you immediately see who of your colleagues is now working.
In the first version we always for each participant showed live video, but the video encoding/decoding gave a serious load on the CPU, and work on the computer was not comfortable. Therefore, in a conventional, "passive", mode we display the photos that are updated every 2 seconds.
After the girl Kira is not coming out of Remote came with the computer to the toilet — I added a little bit of privacy, now the photos pixelicious.
Click on any person in 1-2 seconds it opens with a video stream. If you're already in a conversation, click on the person attaches it to your current conversation. At the same time in the room can occur many conversations. The participants of a conversation are marked with the same color.
the all.
It was enough to feel the effects. People working in teams, will understand me. While you are working remotely, there is a feeling among employees that they have tasks for input/output. Put you, you did that, you moved on to a new one. And that's all. Over time, it turns into a bunch of unmotivated freelancers.
With Remota the situation is changing. The remote stimulates spontaneous communication. Instead of one and a half hour conference once a week in Hangouts where both communicate the two, and the others pretend not to sleep in Remote we get 20-40 "chat" with an average length of about 5 minutes that occur just when they are needed and between those who needs them.
The work became more "comparison rate", short communication sessions to discuss current progress on the task, and the decision how to develop it further. By reducing time to feedback the performance of the team according to my estimates increased by 10-15%. But most importantly the guys in the team have to communicate among themselves. Kira and the girls began to put on makeup in the morning, before work, the guys pleases the eye. This is not a gaggle of unkempt freelancers in stretched t-shirts and team employees.
how it all works
Technically it's a Remote backend on Python (Flask, PostgreSQL, Gevent, Gevent-websocket) and the frontend is a single page application in JS (AngularJS). For video transmission used WebRTC. In the current version of the video transmitted peer-to-peer between the participants. For voice input is used Web Speech API. As STUN/TURN server is used rfc5766-turn-server.
frequently asked questions
Hidden text
This question was on duty everywhere. No better, and in some functions worse. We have different problems.
Remote is designed for routine. Fast, small, changing the number of persons for discussion and deadlines, limited working day.
In turn, only in our service based on people and processes office, the maximum simplicity and speed.
It is your right. This service is for those who want to see, communicate, and work together with their colleagues.
Now all so well as in the office. You can just tell people "I work, don't bother for nothing." In the future we will add "employment", similar to the tomatoes in the Pomodoro Technique. You say that in the next 40 minutes, you'll be busy. At this time, the entire team sees what you are doing and will not bother you for nothing.
you are better Than Skype/Hangouts?
This question was on duty everywhere. No better, and in some functions worse. We have different problems.
Remote is designed for routine. Fast, small, changing the number of persons for discussion and deadlines, limited working day.
In turn, only in our service based on people and processes office, the maximum simplicity and speed.
What if I don't want to see me?
It is your right. This service is for those who want to see, communicate, and work together with their colleagues.
What if the sudden calls to distract me?
Now all so well as in the office. You can just tell people "I work, don't bother for nothing." In the future we will add "employment", similar to the tomatoes in the Pomodoro Technique. You say that in the next 40 minutes, you'll be busy. At this time, the entire team sees what you are doing and will not bother you for nothing.
Current status
For the first month of closed beta, we have 500+ users in nearly 170 companies.
Russia, Ukraine, USA, Canada, Australia — the main countries of residence of the user.
The ratio of Russian users of English-speaking, about 70 to 30. We received positive reviews from famous people. We worked out a basic scenario and opened a free registration.
Thanks
We Express gratitude to our families who are with us experience all the success and downfall,
Separately all indifferent to the project and supports it with advice.
We must read, listen, discuss your comments and take note.
It's a service for people.
What?
The project has already passed beta testing. We already took off. The service is used by many companies. And all the more eager to share it with others, so for all habrovky to 01.09.13 special offer:
Sign up for https://remote.st/ and write to support@remote.st the code phrase "I c Habra", with reference to your profile on habré, and the address with which you registered in the Remote and I'll throw you a free month service.
