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Introducing the watercooler tag (light off-topic chitchat)

Ben Halpern on July 12, 2019

Hey folks, we're launching a new tag called "watercooler" #watercooler Follow Light, and off-topic conversation. ...
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Gustavo • Edited

Hey Calin,
one time I heard from creating a water cooler for remote collaboration was in the Remote book from the Basecamp guys.
These are the tips for collaborating remotely mentioned in that book, taken from this review:

  • Try to make sure that employees on different time zones have about four hours of overlap in working hours.
  • Use screenshots or screencasts to communicate information.
  • Share information openly on work schedules, to-do’s, calendars, and files.
  • Create a “virtual water cooler,” a chat forum for fun and social stuff.
  • Share progress with each other to fuel that sense of achievement and momentum.
  • Consider a hybrid strategy, with some employees working in the office and some at home. (37signals has a Chicago office with about 10 people, while the other 26 are spread across the world.)
  • Don’t only try one remote worker – try at least a team.

Not sure if that's the real origin of it, though.

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Ben Halpern

Oh, by the way. We're looking for watercooler mods. Anyone interested?

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Jess Lee

more info on tag modding: dev.to/tag-moderation

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Yechiel Kalmenson

I don't mind taking that!

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Nadine M. Thêry

I am interested in doing that :)

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Mike Bifulco

Y'all are going to have to make sure the water cooler is topped up though 😉

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Ben Halpern

Yay!

You’re welcome to make one of the first posts 😄

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Priyanka Kore

Really apt name.. #watercooler 😁

 
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Bhupesh Varshney 👾

Ah, I See You're a Man of Culture As Well

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Jack Harner 🚀

Am I going crazy or did this launch a while ago too?

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Ben Halpern

It went live a little while ago but we didn’t take the final steps to make it an officially supported tag.

We actually wrote some code to make this tag show up less in the feed if you don’t follow because we didn’t want it to bother folks who are here just for technical stuff.

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Jess Lee

We might want to add the note about hiding the tag directly on the tag page for anyone who misses this post. Whaddyathink?

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Ben Halpern

Yeah we should