Communication is the hardest part of a distributed team. These are some of the ways we communicate. This is an evolving process, not a solved problem.

In Person

When possible, it's important to meet in person occasionally. Even brief in-person meetings create connections that result in remote work relationships being more productive and meaningful.

Twice a year (aside from COVID times), we have a team gathering. We meet in Bellingham, Washington in the summer and Tucson, Arizona in the winter. There's some high-level work discussion at these meetings, but it's mostly social.

Online

With the exception of forwarding an email from an automated system or an outside source, we almost never send email to each other.

We use Slack for both synchronous and asynchronous communication, for both work and daily workplace socialization.

On Mondays, we have a team meeting over video chat that's followed by a social hangout. People may talk about their weekend and whatever else comes up (thankfully, not politics).

For internal bug tracking, we use GitHub Issues.

Different teams will also use and experiment with other tools appropriate for their communication needs. For example, we have some teams who use Basecamp and Trello.