Working in the Cloud Challenge: Community
Working in the cloud can make community a challenge but can be overcome with different technologies. (Image from “Make Toons Not War” t-shirt produced for sale on Redbubble)
Personalities, life stages, experience all make it challenging to work together as a team even when you’re in the same room.
The distance that comes from working in the cloud adds another set of challenges in communication, collaboration and community.
Here are some tools we use at Timbuktoons to overcome community challenges…
Developing a sense of community as a team is the biggest challenge. When you’re heavy in production and miles apart it’s tough to find time to just hang out.
And when there’s a lull in work there’s even more of a disconnect…less obvious reasons to communicate regularly.
Many times on a project co-workers are more like silos versus team…working on a chunk of the project independently.
You can’t replace face-to-face time but right now bringing people together on a retreat isn’t always an option.
It’s important to note though that studies have shown that with teams in the same building the farther you are apart (hallway, floor, etc.) the less you talk to each other. Distributed teams actually score better on this.
One way remote teams foster community is to create private online social spaces, an internal virtual water cooler. A place to check-in more regularly, celebrate birthdays and milestones and keep tabs on what’s going on in each of our lives.
We primarily use social media to give a glimpse of studio culture and let others know what we’re up to.
Right now we use:
- Facebook (for building a tribe)
- Twitter (for commenting on industry news)
- LinkedIn (for connecting with industry leaders and potential team)
- WordPress (for thought leadership and sketch blogging)
- Pinterest (for establishing our studio culture)
- Redbubble and Instagram (for marketing random thoughts and ideas)
At Timbuktoons we try to overcome these challenges with technology…
But we’re still in the “wait and see” mode in several areas. Different tools have elements we like but none of them are an all-in-one solution for us yet. That’s why we keep trying new things to make working in the cloud as efficient as possible!
Other posts in this series:
Working in the Cloud Challenge: Communication
Working in the Cloud Challenge: Collaboration
Working in the Cloud: Benefits