Default to Public and Written

If you are joining a remote team or organization the most important advice you can get is default to having conversations in public channels. And default to written or recorded (if recorded, ideally with a transcript).

If you don't do this tons of useful information ends up moving around in the background in super inefficient ways when you use DMs.

This is a frustrating experience for everyone, because it's hidden, repeated, and not meaningfully searchable.

Please default to public channels.

Defaulting communication style to public and written will help disseminate knowledge going forward, reduce communication burdens, and make things searchable going forward, which means you can also have people use search before asking and have it potentially be valuable for everyone, saving time and frustration.

But what if someone DMs me?

If you are DM'd something and think it would benefit from being a public discussion, before having the discussion, ask the other individual to lift the message into a public channel because you feel it could be valuable to others as well, and wait to continue the conversation until the question of whether or not it's appropriate to lift into a public channel is resolved.

This second piece is my favorite trick to politely remind folks to stay out of DMs for things that ought to be in your organization's public domain.

If you've got other tips and tricks to help folks remember to have their conversations in public channels I'd love to hear them - brittonbroderick@gmail.com