Making Space for Community Knowledge-sharing in a Distributed World
This video is featured in the Knowledge Management playlist.
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 Written knowledge-bases (if you have them) can be dry or become out of date, and replicating hallway conversations where you can bump into new people or share stories (and commiserations!)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
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USDS had a strong in-person oral knowledge culture that struggled to translate into remote work during the pandemic.
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Internal hackathons serve primarily as community-building tools rather than ensuring direct business value.
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Providing food or food delivery credits is a powerful motivator for hackathon participation, especially virtual events.
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Async hackathons significantly reduce active engagement and cross-team collaboration compared to synchronous events.
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Biweekly brown bag sessions (the ‘nitty gritty’) foster ongoing cross-community discussions and knowledge sharing more effectively than infrequent hackathons.
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Live closed captions and Slack-based conversation persistency greatly enhance accessibility and longevity of virtual meetings.
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Setting working agreements like take space/give space and embracing diverse communication styles improves inclusivity.
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Facilitation is both about managing the environment and performing—using smiles, exaggerated gestures, and patience with silence.
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Despite a culture resistant to documentation, creating and actively socializing lasting, accessible resources encourages sustained knowledge sharing.
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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."
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