/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-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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Jargon
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.)

Nicknames
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.

In-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.

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.

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 by
Mark Norman Francis
http://ﬂickr.com/photos/mn_francis

Russ Garrett
http://ﬂickr.com/photos/russss

Ben Firshman
http://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?

Curious?
Feedback?
james@devfort.com

Curious?
Feedback?
james@devfort.com
Survey: http://bit.ly/devfort-opentech-2013-survey

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

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