Apr 05 2006
Going Bedouin
“Going Bedouin.” What a great name for an extension of “virtual office.” Other than the two founders in an office in Austin, we’ve been virtual at BiM for the past year and a half. It’s working great for the development/operations team, but the CEO and the original founder sometimes miss the in-person contact.
I think the big issue growth issue is that communication needs grow non-linearly as the company grows in headcount. That said, we’ve learned over the past 18 months to make sure to ‘drop in’ the ‘offices’ of others very regularly, and have staff conference calls weekly. The Dev/Ops team has daily, or multiple times per day, impromptu group phone calls – which we’ve ended up sometimes calling “WC’s”, or “water cooler” time. We also keep a group IM channel open all the time.
So BiM is a case where Bedouin is working, although it will be a challenge as we grow.