Running Remote

When I think of Running Remote, I think of innovation, the #futureofwork. And boy was this year inspiring once again! Some questions that were answered; - Is remote work dead? - What is the future of work? - What are ways to enhance team collaboration? - What’s the best way to build a strong remote working culture? - How do you build trust? - How do you decide on salaries and workers comp with a global workforce? - How do you succeed in a-synchronous working? The next couple of weeks I’ll share some more in-depth posts on my key takeaways. Butttttt.. the best thing about this conference is the community! Never seen anything like it anywhere else. It was year 2 and it felt like a homecoming! 🌼 Amazing to see meet old and new again. Here's a not so little shoutout to the old; Egor Borushko, Chase Warrington, Nini Fritz, Bretton Putter, Alma Andino-Frydman, Daryl Seager, Robert Kowalski, Nienke Nina Keizer, ✨Mine (Kocadag) Dedekoca, Tei M., Gonçalo Hall, Michelle Maree, Timo Rongas, Jessie de Groot, Grayson Harris, Lauren Peikert And the new; Kenneth Hellem, Mohit Midha, Kendall Wallace, Aakash Gupta, Richiko Olrichs, Ryan Anderson, Krunoslav Koprivnjak, Rekha Magon, Stephen Huerta, Alexandros Lioumbis, Tabea Müller, Fadi Boulos, Aakash Gupta, Amir Salihefendic, Salman Mustafa And everyone who I forgot to tag. Thank you all so much! Until next year! #runningremote

This week I had a literal watercooler chat with Prithwiraj Choudhury 😃. Much fun for those who understand the tiny bit of irony in this. Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury is the Lumry Family Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School. He was an Assistant Professor at The Wharton School prior to joining Harvard. His research is focused on studying the Future of Work, especially the changing Geography of Work. He is changing the world. To make sense of the new world of work, he brings more hard data—and thereby rules out opinions. Prithwiraijs research on the concept of "Work From Anywhere," which he was studying long before the pandemic, is some of the most widely cited, awesome work. Hailed by other future of work experts for his "deeply insightful work" and studying remote-based employees outside the usual office worker profile, his research finds that being able to choose work locations, as long as people gather occasionally, leads to productivity boosts. His latest work focuses on big company offsites and how they can build worker connections and become future alternatives to downtown offices. Mic-drop (🎤👋) moment: ”Already today some Manufacturing companies are becoming off-site lead with help of digital twins” Do the thought process for yourself. Visualization: A team of Manufacturing engineers sitting in a great off-site get together periodically operating a Manufacturing line far far away, real time. Mindblowing ◼️ Back to the watercooler moment: Brian Elliott, I love your take on that the watercooler effect is not a real connection builder. However Prithwiraj and I found out that we have some mutual friends over a cup of water. #FutureofWork Running Remote

Another great Running Remote conference in the books! It was great to catch up with friends old and new, share lessons we’ve learned building a remote company, and to take in the sights and sounds of amazing Lisbon. This year at Running Remote, things felt a little different. That optimism about new ways of working was tempered by the massive push to RTO. But, most of us in the knowledge economy are working distributed now. Wether we are colocated in an office, or spread through the world - the work we do is distributed and enabled by the cloud. This fact challenges us to be mindful about how we use our time together. Wether it’s in the office or at company meetups, the time in person should be used to build trust, to facilitate communication, and to deepen the bonds that lead to better work. At the same time, while the big companies are pulling RTO, millions of “born remote” companies and projects have been started. The horse has left the barn. There is no looking back. Just looking forward to innovating the best ways to collaboratively work. Thanks to RR for an eye-opening week. It was wonderful to catch up Kasia Triantafelo Danny Smith Stephanie Henson Georgie Powell Kendall Wallace Sonja Marie Schiebold and many others!

The best community centered around remote work you’ll find. My favorite part after attending last years Running Remote was the people that I met. That was repeated again this year. I challenge you to find a community of people who genuinely want to help others more than this one. It was great to catch up again with Chase Warrington, Darcy Marie Mayfield, Sacha Connor, Kenneth Hellem, Mischa van Wieringen, Nienke Nina Keizer, Michelle Maree, Michelle Coulson, and Gonçalo Hall. Awesome meeting for the first time Q Hamirani, Dave Cairns, Stephen Dooley, 🧩 Howard Wu, Bretton Putter, and many more. Highlight talks from the amazing Annie Dean, Nick Bloom, Brian Elliott, Bobbie Racette, and Ilma Tiki, to name a few. Hige thank you to Liam Martin , Egor Borushko, Kasia Triantafelo, Rachel Yenko-Martinka, and the rest of the awesome Running Remote team for another epic event. Can’t wait for next year! **Posted from my airbnb in Lisbon, Portugal 🇵🇹 #flexiblework #remotework #distributedwork #digitalnomad #powerengineering

In our final interview from Running Remote, Dave Cairns and Annie Dean chat about how Atlassian made the transition towards distributed work. Watch for Annie's tips about what makes a successful hybrid team and what leaders need to be aware of in this next chapter of working practices. (Also don't miss Annie and Dave's matching denim outfits) #Kadence #HybridWork #RunningRemote

A huge thank you to everyone involved in making Running Remote an amazing event that offered such diverse and insightful perspectives on modern work. I had the pleasure of speaking alongside Ryan Anderson, Dave Cairns and Sacha Connor on the great workplace debate: the office vs. hybrid vs. what we at Dropbox call Virtual First. Everyone brought a different perspective on what the future of work could look like, and it’s clear we can all agree the traditional workplace needs to be reimagined and flexibility reigns supreme. Major thanks also to Annie Dean and Miriam Romaniuk for hosting one of the most well-facilitated dinners I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending - it was so wonderful meeting several future of work thought leaders in-person! There were so many great insights and learnings from the conference but some of the most powerful to me are: Distributed teams are adopting AI at a much higher rate than co-located teams - this really drives home how innovative and forward-thinking distributed teams are, and the strong role that AI will play as we continue to evolve modern work. More and more organizations are evolving beyond the office, now focusing on what the in-person experience means for their teams and employees - this was clear through the research and findings so many of the speakers shared. And beyond that, being truly intentional about how you gather in-person is an absolute must in order to enable the most impactful gatherings. I love seeing such passion and vigor around these topics, and I’m looking forward to the evolution of the conversation as we move forward! #runningremote2024 #FutureofWork #VirtualFirst

Fantastic first time at Running Remote conference this week in sunny #lisbon!!! ☀ Super fun Happy Hour kick-off to finally meet Kasia Triantafelo, Rachel Yenko-Martinka in person, and chat with Nathan Manuel about our overlap in furniture making! 🙂 Monday: Wonderful to participate in Enterprise Academy where my problem statement was how to help our frontline managers think 10x vs 2x! Very inspired by speakers Rosie Sargeant, Sacha Connor, Brian Elliott, Brian Sharp, Miriam Romaniuk, Kelly Ann Doherty, Corina Kolbe, Kate North, and many more debunking the myths of distributed work! We also all connected our mutual frustration with ineffective meetings and I particularly loved Sophie Wade's take on banter at the beginning of a meeting as a purposeful connection! My biggest take aways were Ergeon still has more work to do to increase staff trust and make meetings even more effective! 🕓 Tuesday: I was honored to share a stage with Dart Lindsley, Michael Cockburn, and Rosie Sargeant discussing whether we should measure Productivity! It was a very lively debate, but we could all agree on a few things: 🔹 We must measure the outcomes before productivity 🔹 You can only measure productivity when the teams reach a certain scale and process stability 🔹 We all hated "micro-management", but loved the idea of "micro-enablement" or even "micro-empowerment" Also a phenomenal talk by Dr Kate Barker on the future of work in 2030 with the key theme being more human-centric work!!!  💡 Wednesday: while my AI coaching discussions started with Ruxandra Cord🫀, Kate North, and John O'Duinn already on Monday night, it was fun to continue the discussion. I led a discussion with Luis Magalhaes, Shegun Holder on how each of us is using AI uniquely in our companies. 🔹 AI can be used to personalize and humanize whether it is for your team or your customers 🔹 AI can be used for much faster prototyping and testing - then trusting the user data vs depending on opinions of a few 🔹 Like every other tool that came before AI, there is always a learning curve on how to use it effectively It is fascinating that being fully distributed and having already practiced an async text based communications between team members allows for a more natural application of AI tools! 🤯 Overall, I walked away appreciating how unusual Ergeon is to be a fully distributed team and geo diverse team, while delivering a physical service! 🚧 Yet, our contractors were always distributed from day one as well! They work at different homes, never meeting each other. Special thank you to my local host Joana Tching Andrade and her family for the wonderful hospitality, we will be back!!! 💙 #runningremote #distributedteam #founderjourney

Why go to Running Remote? Look, I can give you a list of 100+ reasons WHY, but here is only one that truly matters: PEOPLE. I know, we all love working remotely because it offers flexibility, increases opportunities, and gives us the freedom to create a lifestyle that uniquely works for us. However, IRL moments are the catalyst for pursuing our biggest dreams. This conference was incredibly powerful because of the PEOPLE. My ROI of coming to Lisbon is strengthening connections and creating new ones. So a BIG shoutout to the Running Remote team: Liam Martin, Egor Borushko, Kasia Triantafelo, Rachel Yenko-Martinka plus all the volunteers and people behind the scenes 💎 Another BIG shoutout to the inspiring speakers like: Annie Dean, Chase Warrington, Mohit Midha, Q Hamirani, Ilma Tiki, Bobbie Racette, Mauro Alejo Guevara, Sophie Wade, Chris Reynolds Shelby Wolpa Brian Elliott Justin Harlan and many more!! 💎 And a BIG shoutout to friends and new connections Michelle Coulson, Matthew Young, Nini Fritz, Lavinia Yosub, John Lee, ✨Mine (Kocadag) Dedekoca, Anna Maria Kochanska, Gonçalo Hall, Richiko Olrichs, My Hoang Nguyen, Renee La Tour, Kenneth Hellem, Michelle Maree Daryl Seager, Mischa van Wieringen, Sarah Rapp, Alex Hernandez, Sara Vieira 😊 See you hopefully next year! ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ 👋 I'm Nienke Nina, a Marketing Strategist specializing in Digital Nomad & Remote audiences. 🔋 My mission is to make marketing & sales a joyful experience that feels human 💎 Voted as a Remote Influencer by Remote together, along with 149 other inspiring people ✨

Wrapping up an amazing week here in Lisbon at Running Remote 🇵🇹 There are so many people to thank, but I'll start with those who are responsible for bringing us together: Egor Borushko Liam Martin Rachel Yenko-Martinka Kasia Triantafelo, and the whole Running Remote crew 👏 Awesome job as always, you are the true stars of this show! To all my friends and colleagues who attended and shared their insights with the rest of us - thank you for building in public, and more importantly, for being awesome humans. There's nothing like that IRL connection and I'm lucky to call so many of you true friends. For everyone who attended my presentation - thank you for your support, questions, and feedback! I hope sharing our experiences at Doist helps your team thrive by leveraging your co-located time together 🚀 For those I failed to connect with, ugh - we needed more time 😔 Let's catch up for a virtual coffee soon! And for those who couldn't make it, you were missed and spoken of often - we'll see you next year 🙏 Looking back on this week, I have several key takeaways, but I think Annie Dean summarized them perfectly in her opening keynote (paraphrasing): "99% of CEOs believe the future of work is more distributed than it is today." So the question is: are you building your team for the past, the present, or the future? Something for all of us to consider between now and next year's Running Remote. Obrigado and safe travels everyone 👋

Building great companies is about building revenue and teams, but also building relationships. And those relationships are even more important for those of us working distributed around the world. Grateful to spend an evening with Time Doctor customers, partners and peers last night at a beautiful spot in Lisbon during the Running Remote conference with a lot of learning and laughing. #runningremote2024 Ilma Tiki Luis Magalhaes Nathan Manuel Ruxandra Cord🫀John O'Duinn Masha Sutherlin João Elvas Pinheiro Elisabeth Diana Amir Salihefendic Liza Mash Levin Inna Chekler Karen Ruiz Anton Ball Kate North