10,000 hours distributed, why being remote is the best way to run a team

We’ve all heard of the 10,000 hour rule. One of my favorite stories, is of Picasso in his old age sitting in a cafe enjoying a cup of coffee. A woman recognizes him, walks up and asks for a sketch on her napkin. Picasso says yes and spends five minutes producing the sketch for her. He say’s “That will be $25,000”, the woman gasps and says “But it only took you 5 minutes?!?”. “Yes my dear, but it took me sixty years to learn how to do it.”

By the time of this talk I will have over 7,500 hours logged working as part of a completely distributed team. With countless more logged while in previous positions that could only be considered partially distributed. Chromatic was founded in 2006 as a distributed company. As a whole we’ve logged nearly 50,000 hours working entirely in distributed environments.

Distributed teams aren’t part of the future, they are part of today and something all clients and vendors need to understand. This session will cover the following:

• Why ‘virtual’ is the wrong term.
• Why distributed (or remote) teams are important.
• Tools (and how to select them) for distributed teams.
• Management for distributed teams.
• Bringing it all together, how if one person is remote it means the entire team is distributed.
• Additional resources.