Tag Archives: tools

On the (Cool) Tools You Need for a Smooth Distributed Experience

The basic toolkit for distributed teams has stayed fairly stable in recent years — a real-time chat app, a robust video conferencing platform, and discipline-specific collaboration systems for engineers, designers, and support teams, to name a few. On his recent appearance on the Cool Tools podcast (hosted by Mark Frauenfelder and Kevin Kelly), Matt Mullenweg dives deeper into the world of distributed tools, talking about the ones that streamline and optimize his work as the CEO of a company that employs around 1,200 people across dozens of countries and multiple time zones.

Matt covers several fronts, from better webcam setups to messaging apps, and gives a special nod to P2, the WordPress theme that powers Automattic’s internal blogs:

We use actually a free theme called P2, which turns your internal blog or any blog, really, into kind of a real-time system. It sort of puts a posting box on the homepage, so anyone who’s a logged-in user can see a posting box right on the homepage. You don’t have to visit a separate admin. And then it has fully threaded comments and posts also on the homepage. And by real time, I mean if a new comment or post comes in, it’ll actually pop up on your screen without you having to reload. It’s great for asynchronous conversations. We use it instead of email actually, and it’s been definitely the thing that’s allowed us to scale to now 1,200 people.

Listen to the entire conversation on Cool Tools

Distributed FAQ: What Are the Key Tools for Creating an Effective Remote Work Environment?

In Distributed FAQ, Matt Mullenweg addresses some of the most common issues companies, executives, and individuals face as they consider transitioning to a distributed model.

Q. What are the necessary tools and processes to create an effective remote work environment?

A. There’s a lot to say here, of course, so let’s start with a few fundamentals:

  • Choose a small set of core applications for the entire organization, for example Zoom for video calls, Slack for day-to-day conversations, and G Suite for documents, spreadsheets, and (if you choose to use it) email. 
  • Foster a strong sense of autonomy. Give individual teams a lot of freedom to choose the rest of their stack, whether it’s GitHub for development, Asana or Trello for project management, InVision or Figma for design, and so on.
  • Try out a no-email approach. At Automattic, our secret sauce is that we don’t use email within the company. Instead, we have an internal blogging system called P2. P2 displays all conversations on a team or project’s homepage, updates in real time, and comes with the built-in benefit of being a searchable blog. You can also tag individuals and teams on P2. This system creates rich conversations that happen asynchronously and then become the collective wisdom of Automattic. We publish well over 1,000 posts and comments every day.
  • Default to public. At Automattic, we’ve developed a very valuable instinct: always default to everything being public (within the company, that is) — always default to trust.
  • Invest in solid video conferencing tools. Having a good setup for video calls is very important. Audio quality is essential if you’re on a lot of calls, so go for a good headset or use noise-cancelling software. A good desk lamp to illuminate your face can make a real difference. And give some thought to the background people will see behind you — it can have personality, but you’ll want to keep it from getting too cluttered. 

For a comprehensive list of recommended hardware and software for remote workers, check out our Tools and Gears page, as well as Matt’s “What’s in My Bag?” posts.

Remote Work Depends on Access to Information — and on Mutual Trust

When it comes to work, it never made much sense to give away all your secrets. The predominant culture of information hoarding and hiding exists partly because many of us live in fear for our jobs:

If I tell everyone exactly how I do my job, they can just get rid of me! 

If you don’t get along with your boss, they might fire you — so you try to make yourself as invaluable as possible. If you’re an expert, if you’re “irreplaceable,” then perhaps they’ll think twice.  

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