[Standards-JIG] [Fwd: [interop] day 1 summary]

[Hal Rottenberg]

On 8/5/06, Carlo v. Loesch <CvL at mail.symlynx.com> wrote:
> the choice of software tested sounds pretty random.

It was limited to XMPP-compliant software.  That's why Psi wasn't on
there (although we are almost there!)

> why did you have to sit around physically if what you did was sit at your
> laptops and try out something you could have tried out anywhere and without
> leaving anybody out who wasn't there physically?
> your interop day surely had some other useful purpose (down with virtual beer)
> but concerning this test you might aswell have organized it in an internet-
> centric way...

I work for a huge company.  I've never met my boss in person.  I work
from home every day.  I jabber my co-workers on a near-constant basis,
but I never see them.  Only one-fourth are in the state, with the
remainder split between various US states and Bangalore.

There is extremely poor knowledge sharing across the team members.
It's hard for the new employees to get consistent training.  I could
go on, there's a bunch of negatives.

Let me tell you something I have learned.  Honestly, this is no way to
run a company.  It's pretty much unavoidable in my industry (IT
outsourcing), and especially in a global corporation such as the on eI
work for.  But if I were running a startup, I would want to get most
of  the employees in the same location.  The remote ones I'd fly in
periodically to the home office.

There is just no substitute for face-to-face interaction.

For the record, as a senior team member, it works GREAT for me.  :)  I
set my own hours, no commute.  But I miss the interaction with my
cow-orkers sometimes.

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