Art & Logic is once again trying to be selected to present a panel discussion at next year’s SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin. In 2014, we had a great experience there talking about things we’ve learned about doing estimates for software projects.
This year, we’ve prepared a proposal for a panel to be called “Office Free: Building the Perfect 21st Century Company” that will cover some of the lessons (and anti-patterns) about operating and working in a completely distributed company that we’ve learned over the last 25 years.
Art & Logic has been a completely distributed company since 1991, and have heard every reason why what we do can’t be done. More and more businesses are coming around to being office-free, but we see the same mistakes being made repeatedly by organizations trying to adopt this way of working.
This session will talk about lessons we’ve learned in the past 25 years — how to effectively recruit and hire people you’ve never met, how to build strong and cohesive distributed teams, and how to build and nurture a solid company culture without requiring everyone to be in the same building. We’ll discuss tools, too, but mostly how to build an environment for dispersed humans to work together.
The most fun part of this so far has been putting together a video of A&L folks from throughout the company (all across the US and Canada with a special word from Berlin) talking from our home offices about how we’ve all adapted to remote working and found different approaches and ways to thrive.
Watch the video and if you would, please create an account and vote for our proposal at the SXSW Panel Picker.
