Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Making Space for Community Knowledge-sharing in a Distributed World
Gold
Friday, December 10, 2021 • Civic Design 2021

This video is featured in the Knowledge Management playlist.

Share the love for this talk
Making Space for Community Knowledge-sharing in a Distributed World
Speakers: Shelby Switzer
Link:

Summary

Staying connected and learning from your teammates on a distributed team or in a highly siloed organization can be hard. Written knowledge-bases (if you have them) can be dry or become out of date, and replicating hallway conversations where you can bump into new people or share stories (and commiserations!) with coworkers can feel out of reach in a virtual environment. Despite the obstacles, I’ve found that cultivating an engaged remote community and fostering peer-to-peer knowledge sharing is possible. This talk will cover real-world tactics I use at the US Digital Service to engage communities and empower people to be resources to each other, whether they’re in the same room or thousands of miles apart.

Key Insights

  • USDS had a strong in-person oral knowledge culture that struggled to translate into remote work during the pandemic.

  • Internal hackathons serve primarily as community-building tools rather than ensuring direct business value.

  • Providing food or food delivery credits is a powerful motivator for hackathon participation, especially virtual events.

  • Async hackathons significantly reduce active engagement and cross-team collaboration compared to synchronous events.

  • Biweekly brown bag sessions (the ‘nitty gritty’) foster ongoing cross-community discussions and knowledge sharing more effectively than infrequent hackathons.

  • Live closed captions and Slack-based conversation persistency greatly enhance accessibility and longevity of virtual meetings.

  • Setting working agreements like take space/give space and embracing diverse communication styles improves inclusivity.

  • Facilitation is both about managing the environment and performing—using smiles, exaggerated gestures, and patience with silence.

  • Despite a culture resistant to documentation, creating and actively socializing lasting, accessible resources encourages sustained knowledge sharing.

  • Time pressure and a mission-driven urgent environment at USDS make dedicating time to community-building activities challenging.

Notable Quotes

"You can’t have a hackathon without free food."

"Why be here if you’re not going to be here."

"The primary goal of a hackathon is the community building aspect and getting people to talk to each other and learn from each other."

"Zoom fatigue is real, people are not necessarily keen to go into another Zoom meeting even if they think it’s valuable."

"The nitty gritty is a space to become resources for each other so people know who to talk to when they have questions."

"Persisting conversations in Slack instead of Zoom chat means folks can revisit and join conversations asynchronously."

"Be present, put devices down, turn off Slack notifications, and really engage."

"Facilitation is part setting the stage and part performing on it."

"Silence is productive—resist the temptation to fill it immediately after asking a question."

"It’s okay to be goofy and have fun—creating space for awkwardness and playfulness helps engagement."

Dane DeSutter
What co-speech gestures reveal about users’ thinking during interviews
2023 • Rosenfeld Community
Charlotte Lee
Theme 1 Intro
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Josh Clark
Sentient Design, AI, and the Radically Adaptive Experience (1st of 3 seminars)
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Theresa Neil
Designing for Wellness: Specializing in Healthcare
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Melinda Belcher
Bridging the Gap: Making the Most of the Differences Between Agency and Enterprise
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Jim Kalbach
Jazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold
Marc Fonteijn
First Insights from the 2025 Service Design Salary(+) Report
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
Ryan Matthew
DesignOps without Boundaries: Building More with What You Have
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Conference
Ted Neward
Theme 4: Enterprise Organizational Journey
2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Gold
Ruzanna Rozman
Getting in Flow with Your Team
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Dave Hoffer
UX Job Search AMA #2 with Joanne Weaver and Dave Hoffer
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Sam Proulx
Accessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Ash Brown
Silver Linings: What DesignOps Learned in the Shift to WFH
2020 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Alla Weinberg
Workers Are Sick of Change: The Cure is Psychological Safety
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Tiffany Cheng
Designing in a Pandemic: Integrating Speed and Rigor
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Shelby Switzer
Making Space for Community Knowledge-sharing in a Distributed World
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold

More Videos

Yoel Sumitro

"Researchers were obsessed with scientific rigor while designers used balance, feelings, or intuition as their rigor."

Yoel Sumitro

Actions and Reflections: Bridging the Skills Gap among Researchers

March 9, 2022

Zariah Cameron

"When we protect our rest, we also protect our dreaming."

Zariah Cameron

ReDesigning Wellbeing for Equitable Care in the Workplace

September 23, 2024

Doug Powell

"Our essential skill in this next era will be managing disruptive change."

Doug Powell

DesignOps and the Next Frontier: Leading Through Unpredictable Change

September 11, 2025

Darian Davis

"It takes at least one member of a team to choose to set healthy standards for collaboration."

Darian Davis

Lessons from a Toxic Work Relationship

January 8, 2024

Mike Oren

"Position your discovery work as de-risking investments rather than just fuel for innovation or empathy building."

Mike Oren

Why Pharmaceutical's Research Model Should Replace Design Thinking

March 28, 2023

Jacqui Frey

"Design Ops is fundamentally a servant leadership role—guts, no glory, always supporting."

Jacqui Frey

Scale is Social Work

March 19, 2020

Kim Holt

"Showing gratitude through Slack workflows is a low effort, high impact way to build community and recognize everyday wins."

Kim Holt Emma Wylds Pearl Koppenhaver Maisee Xiong

A Salesforce Panel Discussion on Values-Driven DesignOps

September 8, 2022

Samuel Proulx

"Accessibility is innovation and the kinds of features people with disabilities need are incredible conveniences for the rest of us."

Samuel Proulx

From Standards to Innovation: Why Inclusive Design Wins

September 10, 2025

Laine Riley Prokay

"Relationship design is not just what you do but how you do it, focusing on building relationships with customers, employees, and community."

Laine Riley Prokay

How DesignOps can Drive Inclusive Career Ladders for All

September 30, 2021