dev/fort: you can build it in a week @ OpenTech 2013

You can build it in a week*

James Aylett/dev/fort

* even if you get caught in a blizzard http://bit.ly/devfort-opentech-2013

/dev/fort is a tried & tested way of convinced otherwise intelligent people to strand themselves in an isolated spot where they are at risk of starvation, hypothermia, whiskey and pop culture references.

As a side effect we build websites.

http://bit.ly/devfort-emw-2013


http://bit.ly/devfort-opentech-2013

What is /dev/fort?

A dozen people. An isolated location. No internet. No phones. A week to choose an idea, develop it, design it & build it.




What is /dev/fort?Some things we’ve built

WLNY. Mostly Final. History Mesh. BeHabitual. We’re best known for Spacelog.




Why would anyone do that?




Why would anyone do that?It’s really pretty

Firstly because isolated spots can be really pretty. And we all like pretty things.




Why would anyone do that?The unusual can be inspiring

If you’re like me, you live in London and you work in London and, let’s be honest, you don’t leave London all that much. Going somewhere different can cause interesting things to happen inside your brain and result in new ideas.




Why would anyone do that?Geeks are fun to hang out with

Sometimes it's good to hang out with others from your tribe. That's why we're here today, in part.




Why would anyone do that?Geeks are great to learn from

And we get to learn things from people we don’t usually get to work with. That’s another reason we’re here today.




Why would anyone do that?Isolation encourages focus

And of course without distractions you can get a huge amount done…




Why would anyone do that?Revitalise interest in your day job

…and when you put everything together, it can make you excited to go back to work. Seriously.




Improving collaboration

One thing that happens at /dev/fort is that a group of people who may not know each other particularly well start functioning as a team really quickly — in just a couple of days.




Improving collaboration*

* without contravening the Geneva Convention

Now admittedly in most companies you can’t lock your team away for a week, but there are still things that we’ve seen that may help. None of them is particularly radical — there’s recommendations on some of this going back decades or even centuries — but it’s easy to forget, and in a surprising number of companies there are people who think you can put a bunch of people together and instruct them to be a great team.




Improving collaboration*Teams form from within

You can’t. You don’t create a team by saying it exists, or by lecturing people. You can’t impose culture. What you want to do is to help people work together and become a team themselves. Of course at forts we're *all* part of the team. Small startups are like that too, with everyone up to the CEO (and maybe even investors) working together closely. As companies get bigger, you start to get a difference between team culture and overall company culture.




Improving collaboration*Teams form faster under pressure

But the type of pressure is important. You can’t just dump a load of deadlines on people and turn them into a team. Well, actually you can, but they’ll become a team filled with hate. Hate for you.

But if the group imposes its own pressure, that's a different matter.




Improving collaboration*Teams know where they’re going

It’s surprising how few teams have a clear idea of what they’re trying to do. It’s surprising how few *companies* have a clear idea. And if they do, they’re not always great at sharing this with everyone.




Improving collaboration*Teams have their own language

Teams are like little communities, so it isn't surprising that they start developing their own languages.




Improving collaboration*Teams have their own languageJargon

Some of it comes about from whatever they're working on. A shared vocabulary for the problems you're tackling is so helpful in talking about things — and in about knowing that you're all working towards the same thing — that at forts we try to agree names for the concepts we're working on as early as possible. (This also helps highlight any places where there isn't consensus.)




Improving collaboration*Teams have their own languageNicknames

Some of it is more playful. Or sometimes just by necessity: I once worked in a startup of six people where four of us were called 'James'. And when we were building Spacelog we named everyone after astronomical objects.




Improving collaboration*Teams have their own languageIn-jokes

And because teams are communicating a lot, they start to develop their own jokes — or to evolve existing ones. With a bunch of web folk, they may build on jokes doing the rounds on twitter, tumblr or whatever. At the last fort we referenced one animated GIF so much that eventually it just became a gesture <do> 13 people in the world know what that means.

Eventually, a team may start making jokes they wouldn’t say to others: they find their own limits of taste and decency. This can cause a problem if you have a team talking in an IRC channel all day…and then someone else goes and reads the chat logs.




Improving collaboration*Try cooking together

Some teams eat together. And this is great, but what's even greater is when you get to cook together. (Not everyone has to cook. Some people just chop, or turn sausages under close supervision, or do the washing up.) Spending social time together helps bond a team, but doing something active seems to be even better. (This is one of the driving force behind most team bonding activities — and note that one of the paid adverts for "team bonding" on Google yesterday was "corporate cooking classes".)

You can go much further — at forts we don't just cook together; we eat, cook, laugh, drink and give impromptu performances of Gangnam Style. You may not want to go that far. Going back to an earlier point: teams forms from within. Figure out what works for you.




Improving collaboration*Team ⊆ Company

If you have four people in your company, you probably won’t think of separate teams. But well before you hit 20 people you’ll split into teams — and it’s important to respect this.

If you’re the CEO and you notice your web team — designers & developers — are having breakfast together one day every week and you think “that’s great” and start coming: you’ve probably just broken that team. They no longer have that space to socialise as a team.



Additional photos byMark Norman Francishttp://flickr.com/photos/mn_francis

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mn_francis


Additional photos byRuss Garretthttp://flickr.com/photos/russss



Additional photos byBen Firshmanhttp://flickr.com/photos/bfirsh




Curious?

You may be wondering “how do I come to a fort?”. We run about two a year, but forts are always popular so I’m talking to potential sponsors so we can run more. In the meantime, get a recommendation from someone who’s been.




Curious?Feedback?




[email protected]



mailto:[email protected]



[email protected]: http://bit.ly/devfort-opentech-2013-survey









dev/fort: you can build it in a week @ OpenTech 2013

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