FOSS Backstage 2024

Distributed teams that actually work!
2024-03-04 , Stage Wintergarten

Based on two decades of experience in Open Source communities and corporate distributed teams, this talk revisits the core principles of remote collaboration. Concrete recommendations will help you improve the efficiency and happiness of your distributed teams.


Do distributed teams really need to spend most of their time in video meetings to make things happen? Drawing from over two decades of experience in Open Source projects and corporate distributed teams, this talk goes back to the fundamental principles of remote collaboration to explain why the answer is no.

Discover the power of asynchronous decision-making tools and techniques, communication patterns that prioritize clarity and brevity, how being nice and constructive matters, and the art of choosing the right communication tools and using them efficiently.

Many learnings from successful Open Source projects apply to all organizations, but there's no one-size-fits-all solution. Understanding the core principles will help you tune our recommendations to your team's shape and experience.

See also: Slides (8.5 MB)

Bertrand Delacretaz works as a Principal Scientist for Adobe in Basel, Switzerland, on large-scale content management systems. He's also an active member of the Apache Software Foundation, serving on its Board of Directors for more than ten years.