I’ve been digging into the advantages of co-located teams recently so it’s appreciated.

I read lots of papers via the ACM’s digital archive which I believe is for subsribers only – so I don’t usually bother putting in a link to those references.

The paper was called “Virtual vs. face-to-face teams: deadbeats, deserters, and other considerations” and was published in April 2006 as part of the Proceedings of the 2006 ACM SIGMIS CPR conference on computer personnel research: Forty four years of computer personnel research: achievements, challenges & the future SIGMIS CPR ’06. The authors were Emmeline de Pillis and Kimberly Furumo.

I considered it, and considered it not for me. I didn’t feel it was something I could do. (Actually, I don’t think I could work from home. Oh, right, for a pile of cash I could probably put up with it.)

I like *real* interaction. Sure, sitting on IRC with cow-orkers is fine, but I feel the need to see (and not via a videolink) people. To actually interact with the chicks down the other end of the office. Having done a video conference on a project I am working on, then having a meeting face-to-face with said-same people, so much more got done when we were working in the same physical location. Although that was just a meeting, not the project. As they talk about it, and I get to do the work.

So out of a sample of me, I would prefer not to be in a virtual team. I would also prefer not to be a deadbeat, but that is something else.

(And hey! I am enjoying your recent (more frequent-than-before) output. Even if there isn’t enough what-makeup-I-bought-in-Japanaland-type posts.)