A recent note about collaboration (Coworking) suddenly became popular. Probably, the topic is interesting, the problem is relevant. There were many valuable responses, both in the comments, in Habrahabr, and in blogs. But more than the others, I was "hooked" by Alexey Glazkov's article. He writes about the disadvantages of coworking (employees are not bound by common interests, the savings are not so great, and the whole company can only be assembled within the city) and offers his solution — Virtual Coworking (VC):
At exactly 10:00 you go into your home office, turn on your laptop and connect to the network. After checking the mail, you load the “MyVCOffice” working environment... the picture on the screen changes to a flash video with your favorite kind of office: a large bright hall with desks scattered along the walls, with smoking twin buildings visible through the glass back wall, and the Statue of Liberty sticking out there with the sign “Arbaiten!!!”. In the middle of the hall there is a projector on which you can view today's news review, a presentation of monthly solutions for common projects or Jim's latest comics, which are watched by your entire virtual office.
You can read Alexey's entire article here. I recommend. The experience of 37signals is also interesting. The creators of Backpack, Basecamp and other great products, in a series of articles Behind the scenes at 37signals, tell how they use group chat to quickly make effective decisions regarding development, system administration, user support, design, copywriting, etc.
