Remote control? - How to organize work in Corona times and what we can learn from Open Source communities

Open Source communities naturally organize themselves for remote, distributed, and asynchronous work. Companies, on the other hand, predominantly prefer colocated and synchronous collaboration. Keeping offices closed due to Corona, provides a challenge - and opportunity - to combine best of both worlds.

At eyeo, we create the Open Source software Adblock Plus. Organizing work as an Open Source community is deeply ingrained in our company’s DNA. Still, as a company, this is not necessarily the best way to collaborate. In the last years we became more agile, more synchronous, and more team-focused. We try to balance both worlds. With nearly half of our staff working from home, distributed world-wide, we continuously improve remote collaboration. At the same time, we strongly invest in frequent get-togethers and colocated team building.

With Coronavirus hitting Europe, we were very early to close all offices and ban all business travel. With our rich experience in organizing remote work, the crisis hit us by far less than others.

My talk will cover our best practices in combining remote work with an agile mindset, and how we addressed Corona’s challenges regarding international collaboration during crisis, supporting staff tasked with homeschooling and child care, and overcoming mental health issues.