A portal for interacting with a global team
How we could do water-cooler conversations across an ocean
Quartz is moving to a new office in New York. We’re documenting it here because many of our questions apply to other startups. Our introduction explains more about what we’re up to. Follow our publication for updates.
Among the most attractive things about working at Quartz is its people. They are the smartest, funniest, and most diverse group I’ve had the pleasure to work with.
I’m based in London, and my job involves working with people in India, Africa, and, of course, the US. We use all manner of technology to help us bridge that gap: Slack for daily communication, Skype or Google Hangouts for regular video chats, Cisco’s web conferencing for company-wide meetings, and sometimes we even pick up the phone to call a colleague.
But there is a crucial type of interaction that is missing: serendipitous bumping into a colleague who you haven’t spoken to for many weeks, or ever. This problem keeps getting bigger as Quartz hires more people.
That brings me to why I’m whining about this limitation on a blog that’s meant to chronicle the move my New York colleagues are making from 233 Park Avenue South to 675 Avenue of the Americas. I believe that a simple idea might overcome some of those limitations. This post is partly a case I’m making to setup a reasonably cheap experiment and partly a call for other ideas to overcome this barrier.
I’m not the first one to spot the limitation. Those studying office communication refer to water-cooler conversations as means of engaging in informal communication. The idea is that the office water cooler attracts colleagues from all sections of the company, and this serendipitous bumping into each other is known to yield new and valuable ideas. It also helps create a sense of bonding across the office.
Seeing into each other’s worlds
Can we overcome the limitation by creating a virtual connection between the water coolers in New York and London? Say there is a screen with a camera that has a restricted field of view (such that it is able to only focus on things within a few feet of the water cooler). The live video feed from each camera will be cast onto a screen above the water cooler on the other side of the Atlantic. If you happen to come to the water cooler at the same time as another colleague, you can simply hit “mute off” and have a chat with them.
When I discussed this idea with Quartz’s lifestyle reporter Jenni Avins, she told me Gawker Media has already experimented with a “portal.”
This portal, a Gawker employee told me, exists for the tech team that is split between the headquarters in New York and an office in Budapest. The portal takes the form of a massive screen with a high-resolution camera on top placed in the social area in the respective offices.
It has existed for more than five years, and it has achieved more than just enabling serendipitous conversations. The sheer presence of faces on the other side of the portal has improved team cohesion. Knowing what time of the day it is in a remote office is one thing, but seeing the windows go dark in Budapest has made those in New York more appreciative of the situation of those in the remote office.
To achieve these things, the Gawker employee said that placing the portal where people actually frequent is crucial. And so is using an unbreakable and high-quality connection. (They used Cisco’s video conferencing for a few years and then moved to a cheaper option with Life-size.)
Of course, nothing beats in-person contact. Having just come back from visiting the New York office for the first time, I couldn’t agree more. The next best thing, however, might be this portal.
If you have a better idea, please leave a reply.
