Monthly Archives: January 2014

Nothing Beats Word of Mouth

Essays

Aleksey and I are both avid fans of productivity systems here at Gingko, and I might be borderline obsessed with building the “perfect” system (dangerous word, by the way).

Yet, in all my years of obsession, I’ve never once tried or read extensively about the Getting Things Done (GTD) system. Which is a little like being a supposed wine connoisseur, and admitting to never having tried a Cabernet!

Then three weeks ago I received a call from a good friend of mine, raving about the transformation he saw in his brother, thanks to GTD.

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How to Run Effective Meetings with Gingko

uses

You may already know that Gingko is a distributed team, but nothing can convey that better than the following pictures, taken on the same weekend:

Aleksey and a friend, reviewing a map of their ski route, near Perm, Russia.
Aleksey (left) and a friend, reviewing a map of their ski route, near Perm, Russia.
Adriano and his son, at a weekend desert barbecue, in Kuwait.
Adriano and his son, at a weekend desert barbecue, in Kuwait.
Aleksey and Adriano meeting via Skype, from the desert just south of Iraq.
Aleksey and Adriano meeting via Skype, from the desert just south of Iraq.

At a 3 hour time difference between Kuwait and Perm, this is the closest we’ve ever been!

Usually we’re 11 hours apart, Montreal to Perm.

How do we manage to run as a hyper-distrubuted team? It’s taken many months of learning and practice, but one critcal factor, which we are still continually tuning, is running effective meetings.

Of course, we use Gingko to do this. Here’s how we do it:

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