A tip for remote teams of 2-10 people. Create a personal “ramblings” channel for each teammate in your team’s chat app of choice.
Ramblings channels let everyone share what’s on their mind without cluttering group channels. Think of them as personal journals or microblogs inside your team’s chat app, a lightweight way to add ambient social cohesion.
People typically post short updates 1-3 times per week. Common topics include:
- ideas related to current projects
- musings about blog posts, articles, user feedback
- “what if” suggestions
- photos from recent trips or hobbies
- rubber ducking a problem
Each ramblings channel should be named after the team member, and only that person can post top-level messages. Others can reply in threads, but not start new ones.
All the ramblings channels should be in a Ramblings section at the bottom of the channel list. They should be muted by default, with no expectation that anyone else will read them.
We started experimenting with ramblings at Obsidian two years ago, and they’ve been surprisingly sticky. We have no scheduled meetings, so ramblings are our equivalent of water cooler talk. We want as much deep focus time as possible, so ramblings help us stay connected while minimizing interruptions.
Because they are so free and loose, some of our best ideas emerge from ramblings. They’re often the source of feature ideas, small prototypes, and creative solutions to long-standing problems.
About once a year, we do a week-long in-person meetup. Ramblings have been one successful way we keep the human connection going throughout the rest of the year.