footer: 2017-08-24 · © RoleModel Software slidenumbers: true slidecount: false autoscale: true build-lists: true theme: Merriweather, 8
Ben Einwechter Chris Horn
- Focused on process
- Includes best practices for remote teams and remote collaboration
^ - Here's where we are today. It's in Drive and hopefully you've all seen it.
- It follows our general practice of doing things in a repeatable, measurable way. It has a lot from other best practice lists.
Reduce noise in the RMS studio
^ - When sat down to brainstorm, we covered a lot of topics, but very few of them had anything to do with experiments we could conduct.
- When we refined our list, we realized that they were all related to our view of Professionalism, or the Character "C" in core values.
People manage their attention differently
- Some people find it easy to focus and tune things out
- Other people not so much
- Other people tend to chase squirrels
- Putting other people's needs ahead of our own
^ - These are really our conclusions, or at least our assessment of where these suggestions came from
- These need to be covered now, because they put everything else in focus
All meetings are the same
^ Treat every meeting, with remote attendees or without, whether you are remote or physically present, as the same.
Be present
^ Be present for the meeting ^ Don't multi-task ^ If you wouldn't do it sitting next to your coworkers, don't do it when you're remote
Don't do anything on a call that you wouldn't do face-to-face
^ - There's a wide variety of biological activities that are disruptive when you're wearing a microphone.
- Bio-breaks, grabbing a snack, they're probably all fine, either excuse yourself or ask permission
No side conversations
^ Side conversations, whether you're muted or not near the central microphone, are very distracting and unproductive
Use a headset
^ - A directional, noise cancelling microphone should be the default choice
- The built-in microphone sounds at best not terrible
- Microphones which pick up background conversations are very disruptive
Good Lightning
^ On a video call, make sure you can be seen
No Clutter
^ On a video call, a lot of stuff in the background is really distracting
Use a breakout room
^ 3-way pairing, or any meeting with 2 local plus N remote people should be in a breakout room
Learn to control your own volume
^ It's hard to do when you are wearing a headset. A single ear headset is a good balance and allows you to still hear yourself.
- NIOSH SLM https://appsto.re/us/Cy_wbb.i
sox -q --default-device --null trim 0 00:10 stats
^ - National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
brew install sox"RMS Pk DB"- 0dB is the normal threshold of human hearing it's a logarithmic scale
How loud are we?
- How loud do you get?
- How loud is the background noise?
- Are you distracted?
- Are you distracting?
Background Noise
- noisli.com
- White Noise
- Brown Noise
^ - In the RMS Studio
- if we introduce a low level of background noise
- does the in-studio pairing/meetings translate into fewer distractions?
Sound dampening
^ Noise dampening foam in the breakout rooms
Ideas for more experiments?