Successful remote work while protect your privacy - Lessons learned
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Open setFreewareDigital mediaOpen sourceComputerInternetworkingWhiteboardExpert systemTrigonometryTelecommunicationOpen sourceBit2 (number)Different (Kate Ryan album)Physical systemMultiplication signRight angleClassical physicsData managementExpert systemFreewareSelf-organizationGoodness of fitProjective planeTime zoneAsynchronous communicationCASE <Informatik>Video gameMoment (mathematics)VideoconferencingMultilaterationInheritance (object-oriented programming)Event horizonSound effectTerm (mathematics)TelecommunicationEndliche ModelltheorieLattice (order)CollaborationismUniform boundedness principleDigital photographyRemote procedure callStandard deviationOffice suiteSpacetimeInternetworkingLevel (video gaming)Universe (mathematics)SoftwareClosed setOnline chatOcean currentProduct (business)
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Open sourceTranslation (relic)Server (computing)Information privacyTerm (mathematics)CodeComputer fileAutomationRepository (publishing)Software testingFeedbackVirtuelles privates NetzwerkLaptopOpen sourceCodeSource codeFeedbackSoftware testingCollaborationismOpen setEvent horizonProcess (computing)SoftwareClassical physicsDatei-ServerPasswordAuthenticationBitMultiplication signOffice suiteVirtuelles privates NetzwerkFormal languageCodeLocal ringSoftware developerRepository (publishing)1 (number)Materialization (paranormal)MathematicsData managementDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Right angleSoftware bugCore dumpType theoryData conversionSlide ruleMoment (mathematics)MultilaterationArithmetic meanLoginSpacetimeGoodness of fitInformation securityProper mapComputer hardwareMereologyLaptopTablet computerSystem administratorMobile WebComputer animation
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InformationData managementCollaborative softwareInformation privacyDisintegrationLoginTrailAddress spaceTupleVisualization (computer graphics)Data modelMotion capturePerformance appraisalControl flowBlock (periodic table)Computer fileZugriffskontrolleSynchronizationEncryptionGradientEnterprise architectureData recoveryStatuteSystem administratorBoom (sailing)Link (knot theory)EmailPasswordAnalog-to-digital converterProbability density functionBookmark (World Wide Web)Revision controlOnline chatBenutzerhandbuchAuthenticationDrop (liquid)GoogolWebDAVClient (computing)Greatest common divisorContent (media)Subject indexingInsertion lossRead-only memoryServer (computing)Price indexData storage deviceShared memorySelf-organizationClassical physicsSource codeLocal area networkSearch engine (computing)Server (computing)Data structureOffice suiteComputer fileService (economics)Datei-ServerINTEGRALEnterprise architectureElasticity (physics)Type theoryFlow separationUser interfaceDifferent (Kate Ryan album)File systemView (database)Term (mathematics)ResultantInformationMereologyClient (computing)InternetworkingTablet computerMultiplication signWindowVirtual machineConnected spaceVirtuelles privates NetzwerkProjective planeData managementRemote procedure callMoment (mathematics)LoginLink (knot theory)DivisorRule of inferenceComputer hardwareBitSystem callMobile WebNeuroinformatikCursor (computers)CollisionAreaAndroid (robot)IP addressComputer animation
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WritingMessage passingEvent horizonSystem callDemo (music)Product (business)Physical systemSystem administratorMathematical analysisIdeal (ethics)Green's functionPlastikkarteOnline chatPasswordFile Transfer ProtocolDisintegrationControl flowAreaTelecommunicationSynchronizationSource codeData storage deviceComputer networkMessage passingPhysical systemVideoconferencingThumbnailDifferent (Kate Ryan album)WhiteboardMobile appData conversionMultiplication signDynamical systemOverlay-NetzOnline chatSystem callClient (computing)Android (robot)Direction (geometry)TouchscreenoutputOpen sourceGroup actionComputer configurationInformation and communications technologyComputer fileTelecommunicationPoint cloudView (database)Lattice (order)Probability density functionDigital mediaLink (knot theory)
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Alpha (investment)File formatComputer virusSource codeSheaf (mathematics)Computer fileTelecommunicationTable (information)Information securityEinbettung <Mathematik>Link (knot theory)Group actionDigital watermarkingPhysical systemForm (programming)Boom (sailing)Line (geometry)Event horizonGoogolInformation privacyMultitier architectureHardy spaceMach's principleConditional-access moduleDrum memorySystem callWikiInformationSelf-organizationStress (mechanics)Group actionDigital watermarkingOffice suiteSystem callEmailReal numberWordLattice (order)QuicksortInheritance (object-oriented programming)Data managementSoftware developerWhiteboardExterior algebraMultiplication signProjective planeVideoconferencingCursor (computers)Kanban <Informatik>Tablet computerRemote procedure callVirtualizationOpen setElectronic mailing listComputer fileOpen sourceArithmetic meanFreewareCollaborationismWave packetCartesian coordinate systemWater vaporComputer animation
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System callCommutative propertyRight angleSystem callSlide ruleOffice suiteInteractive televisionBitData managementSoftware developerFeedbackMultiplication signSet (mathematics)Expert systemAndroid (robot)Computer virusStructural loadEmailMessage passingData conversionGoodness of fitLattice (order)Uniform boundedness principleScheduling (computing)Remote procedure callWave packetLevel (video gaming)Instance (computer science)Process (computing)Transformation (genetics)Self-organizationOpen sourceNumberMereologyChemical equationVideo gameDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Projective planeoutputEnterprise architectureOrder (biology)Online chatEuler anglesPoint cloudComputer animation
50:26
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:06
Good morning, everybody. I submitted my talk in English, so I will also do it in English because I don't know if someone actually won't speak German. I hope that's OK with everybody. First of all, thanks a lot for the invitation to be
00:22
again at this awesome conference and then in the big room here early in the morning. That's very cool. Thanks a lot for that again. My name is Frank Kalicek. I'm an open source person forever, 25 years. Contributed to lots of different projects, KTE,
00:42
for example, for a long time. I'm an invited expert at W3C to help them with some standards, specifically the activity pub federation standard. Do a bit of lobbying for open source and free software on the European level and on the German level.
01:03
I'm helping the United Nations a little bit, but I'm probably most well-known and also invited here today as the founder of Nextcloud. I want to talk a little bit about our current situation with COVID that we all know, what it means for productivity
01:20
and how to work together over the internet, some social aspects, and then a summary, of course. First of all, a bit about the current situation, the current challenges. I mean, it's not a surprise to anyone here. We're in this pandemic for two and a half years now. This means, of course, a lot of home work, remote work.
01:45
A lot of us turned like a spare desk somewhere at home into our office. Sometimes it works well, sometimes not. Obviously, there are school closings, university closings.
02:00
Things are getting a little bit better now, but obviously that's still a problem. Conferences, so this is a team picture from the last Nextcloud conference in person. Obviously, before the pandemic, as you can see, no one has a mask on. So this is something that is really missing,
02:22
so there's another reason why I'm super happy to be here again, one of the first in-person events again after the pandemic. And obviously, this all leads to some problems, being isolated from others, working from home,
02:41
less social contacts. This can have effects on all of us. So the question is, what will come now? How does it all look like looking forward? I think by now it becomes clear that the pandemic is not
03:04
going away from one day to another, and everything will be as before. A lot of us has hoped it at the beginning, but it becomes clear that this is something we have to deal with in the long term. So obviously, a photo of an old office set up
03:23
where we cramped together, everybody working together in a small space. I don't think this really comes back, to be honest, in that form. A lot of organizations do hybrid models where you work partly remotely, partly in the office, but probably not in these crowded setups anymore.
03:44
Meetings, remember meetings? Lots of people in small rooms. I'm also not sure that these in-person meetings really have a big future. So things really move to working over the internet together, working together with online tools
04:04
for chat and video conferencing. And of course, we will sit together in rooms and talk about things, but that will always be remote participants, in my opinion, and also less crowded.
04:21
So that's actually interesting, because we at Nextcloud, I sometimes say that we did remote work already before it became cool, because that's something that a lot of open source projects and open source companies work remotely over the internet
04:40
together for a long time. And that is something that can be a blueprint for some more classically organized organizations. So at Nextcloud, we have some principles or some things that are really important for this remote work. I want to go through them for now.
05:04
The reason is that, as I said, we are a very big open source community. So we have over 2,000 contributors from all over the world. And we are also a very distributed company. So we actually have employees in 13 countries.
05:21
So as I said, we're doing this remote work for a long time. And then last but not least, Nextcloud is, of course, also a tool to organize that. This is why later I want to show you a few examples how you can actually do this remote work with good open source tools, like Nextcloud and many others.
05:40
So the first thing that's very important is that we understand that remote work means giving people flexibility in time, space, and speed. It's no longer the case that everybody is in the office, 9 to 5, you work from home. But if you work from home, this
06:01
means that you also have other things to do. Maybe you have to take care of your kids. Maybe you have to do, I don't know, do shopping or something. It's no longer that you're just glued to your desk and you work like eight hours, and then you stand up, and then you have your private life. It all mixes more and more together. So this means that you have to give the people the flexibility to also do that.
06:22
Not everybody is just always online. Maybe the person is cooking at the moment and then will react to your request a little bit later. Blaze, this, of course, remote work, obviously. This also can mean different time zones. I mean, it's an open source community.
06:41
It's pretty normal to have people in lots of different time zones, so you cannot really expect that everybody is online all the time. And then, of course, speed. It's another thing. We have to be flexible and to work with everybody together, even if the situations might be a little bit difficult.
07:03
I don't know, maybe someone is really stressed at the moment, has to take care of someone who is sick or, again, handling your children, which are also at home, maybe. So everything can be a little bit slower. And we have to respect that and include that in our team,
07:24
of course. The second thing is, I already mentioned a little bit, asynchronous communication is super important. What do I mean with that? Asynchronous communication is communication that requires that everybody is at the computer
07:40
or at the same place at the same time. Like, if you call someone or you as I said, this might not work because the person is in a different time zone or is, I don't know, bringing the kids to school or doing something else. So asynchronous communication like chat or working with ticket systems or with other systems
08:03
like that can be very, very beneficial. And again, if you work with someone on the other side of the planet, the next lot, we actually have a team member working from Hawaii. That's literally the other side of the planet. Then there you have to work with chat and not with calls.
08:24
Third is transparency, being as open as possible. So it's really important that your organization, you just by default, make everything available to everybody. Because the whole communication collaboration that often happens like in the hallway of a company,
08:44
this all goes away. So there's really a communication problem if you work remotely. And to make this less bad, let's start with just being super open with every document, every chat, everything. Everybody has the right to know everything. This really helps a lot because the whole bringing
09:04
everybody on board on a topic has just become so much harder if you're not in the same room, of course. You have to trust people. That's, of course, easy to say, but it's actually an important thing. And you see this in a lot of classic companies. A lot of managers want to have the employees in the office,
09:24
in the room, because they feel that only then they know that they're working. If they're at home, then who knows what they're doing. That's very old school thinking, of course. So you need to trust the people. You need to give the people the space and the trust
09:43
to do the right thing. You cannot check what they're doing at the moment, and that's OK. You can rely on that. I mean, we are from the open source communities. We have this forever. There's no one. Developers don't have a manager to check if they're really working or not. They're contributing to the code and to the project,
10:02
and that's fine. It's not needed to force them to be in one building, nine to five. So you really need to trust people. This means that you really have to work result-oriented. So at the end, the only thing that counts is what is then produced or what is the outcome of everything.
10:21
It's not important how long the person works or where they are or when they work. It's just important what is produced. That's a whole different way of thinking. Communication, already mentioned, is super important. For that, you really want to have different tools, and I will get back to that a little bit later.
10:43
OK, so what does this mean in practice? So I want to talk first a little bit about an open source community like NextCloud and a second part about a company, NextCloud. So NextCloud is an open source project, 100% open source
11:02
project, which means that people can really contribute in all different aspects with testing, feature requests, translation, packaging, actually development of features, bug fixing, or just giving feedback, everything. This is done by a community, at the moment,
11:23
over 2,000 volunteers, and this is only the people who really work in the core repository. Of course, there are a lot more who are just promoting NextCloud, and it's impossible to even track. But there are really thousands of people worldwide working on all different kinds of things.
11:40
And for that, you need to really provide the right tools and also the right processes or best practices how to do it. At the moment, we have everything we do from a development side on GitHub, but if you use GitLab or something else, it's very similar. Of course, you all know these modern collaboration platforms,
12:03
and they're actually quite good because, as I said, it's very transparent. Everybody can have a look, see what's going on, and getting involved and helping with it. And this can be everything from just writing a bug report, just something is not working. Everybody can do it. You should just get an account, and you just
12:22
type in what you want to say, and you send it. And then you get an answer or getting into a conversation with someone else. And that's just super, super open. Again, for this group, it's probably very normal. But if you're coming from a classic company, then this is mind-blowing. It's just like everybody can say anything about everything
12:43
and criticize you, of course. But that's something that's important if you want to have a community of contributors. Then translations. Next slide at the moment is available in 96 languages. This includes very important ones like Klingon, for example,
13:04
and others. And this is all done by volunteers. This is all just volunteers who are translating the software in all these languages. For that, we are using Transifex. It's also a nice collaborative online tool to do it.
13:22
But there are other tools who could do the same. Promotion is another thing of contributing, right? It's not only contribution, it's not only coding. There are other things. For example, we have all the marketing material, all the promotional material. Everything is available.
13:40
Fun story. I was at a conference in the US four weeks ago because I gave a talk there. And I just walked in and said, look, into the event. And OK, I'm giving a talk there. And then I'm looking around the corner. And there was an xCloud booth. And I didn't even know it.
14:01
It was just some local community people decided to organize a booth. I mean, all the marketing materials available, logos, printouts, flyers, everything. And that was just a booth, just done by community enthusiasts. And it's only possible if you're super transparent and all this material is available.
14:21
And then there's, of course, code contributions. These are, of course, a bit more difficult. You need to be a developer. You really need to study the source code first before you can do a contribution. But again, this has to be super, super easy. In this case, the workflow is you just check out the code. You need to do this anyways to test it
14:42
or to do what you want to do, do your changes. Then you press this button, create pull request. And then it's submitted as a suggestion, basically. And then you get some feedback, some automated feedback from tests that are executed and also manual feedback
15:02
from other people reviewing what you're doing. And then it's in, and that's all. You don't need to ask for permission or talk with your manager or I don't know. That's how it works. And yeah, I think this way, how we work here
15:22
in open source communities really can be a blueprint of working in classic companies too. Talking about classic companies, now I want to talk a little bit about how this works in my opinion from now on in the post-COVID times.
15:45
And I want to go through some features of Nextcloud and how that can help with these processes. But of course, there's other software. It's not saying that you need Nextcloud, but this is like the example here. The first is if you work from remote, if you work from home
16:03
or from, I don't know, wherever you are, the first challenge is to actually have access to everything. And this might sound super trivial for a lot of you. Again, the open source community, it's normal to have everything online. But again, a lot of classic companies
16:22
that work with paper, which you don't have if you're sitting at home because the paper is in the office maybe, or not everything is digitalized. And maybe it is digitalized, but it's like sitting on a file server in the office and you don't really have access to it from home because then you need VPN, and this comes with other problems,
16:42
and it's all really a mess. So actually, to have access to everything is like the first step to enable remote work. Very, very basic. And I think we should kill this whole concept of VPNs. We should make the tools available to everybody.
17:03
And there are other ways. I will show it in a second to secure everything. But the whole concept of that everything needs to be in the office. And if not in the office, then virtually in the office, this doesn't work. Again, bring your own device. I think it's another important thing, this whole concept of laptops that are coming from the company
17:24
and then are certified. And then you have one laptop for a company, and then you have your other things. But you're not allowed to use your tablet or your phone because they're not approved by the administrators. I mean, this all creates so many problems. And I think we have to find other solutions for that.
17:43
If you have good software, like NextCloud, but again, there are many others, there are actually good ways to make sure that access to the tools from remote are secure. For example, you can have proper password policies, as you all know them. There are modern ways for authentication.
18:02
For example, the WebAuthn standard, which is now endorsed also by the big IT companies anyways. There are ways to work with two-factor authentication, of course, with hardware keys, with OTP, push notifications,
18:20
many options. So there are lots of ways to secure the access to the infrastructure without having dedicated hardware or dedicated VPN. There are also ways at NextCloud to manage the devices. So you can, for example, if you lose your phone, there's a way to wipe your phone directly
18:41
from inside NextCloud or revoke access from this device but not from the other. So there's basically an easy mobile device management already available. That's important. Then there are tools available, like the suspicious login detection. There's actually some fancy machine learning
19:01
that we have in NextCloud that is analyzing the login behavior. And if someone logs into your account from an IP address from China in the middle of the night, then this is a bit unusual. And then some things happen. For example, the account is locked,
19:21
or there will be a warning, or a second factor is triggered, or other things. So that's another tool, just as an example, to secure the access. The next thing is a feature. It's called File Access Control. That's also a nice tool where you can, as an administrator,
19:40
you can decide who can do what, when, where, with what device. For example, you can create a rule that certain files that are tagged with super secure, I don't know, can only be accessed by people from the marketing LDAP group, from IP spaces, from Europe,
20:08
at a certain time, from a certain device. You can, stupid example, sorry, but you can imagine that you can model some kind of policies like that. And again, there's no need for dedicated hardware
20:22
or dedicated VPNs here. And of course, there are other things like end-to-end encryption, which obviously are also super helpful to secure the data. Last but not least, in the area of access, I also want to mention another challenge that's there.
20:41
Because at the beginning, I said that we need flexibility with time of the people. We implemented during the COVID times a feature that's called user status. Lots of you might know it from messengers, where you can say that you're available or that you're on vacation or you're sick
21:03
or you are just offline or I don't know. And that's something that we implemented now in Nextlot for everything. So you can set your status, and it really becomes visible everywhere. For example, if you want to assign like a project management to do to someone, you can immediately see if the person is like on vacation
21:23
at the moment or not. If you want to call someone or chat with someone, you can immediately see that a person might be not available at the moment or it's actually a different call. You can see that too. So there's no need to call the person now if the person is not available. So that's another example for access that I want to mention.
21:43
OK. So now that we have access to everything from home, what do we actually do? First, we need to, of course, see and work with documents. That's, of course, something that, again, with Nextlot
22:00
works nicely. You have a web interface. Again, you might think web interface is trivial, obviously. You don't believe how many companies only have a Windows file server and there's no web interface. If you're not connected with your computer via ethernet to the infrastructure, you just don't have the files.
22:20
In this case, we have a web interface which works for lots of devices. Different ways to access data, like in the grid view and with other views, obviously. There are sharing possibilities. This is also something when you want to collaborate outside your organization and you just want to send someone a link to upload a file
22:44
or to access a file, maybe read only, and they can set a password, might expire at some time. So really share documents also with others outside your organization. Another problem lots of you might have also in classic file service is that the file system
23:02
structure is super complicated. You have thousands of folders and it's not really clear what goes where. There we implemented this project feature. So on top of every folder, you can actually have a bit of a documentation that's a markdown file where you document what is this folder,
23:21
what goes in there, and so on. This is also available on desktop and mobile, not only in the browser, of course. You can even have things like checkboxes for a tiny bit of project management where you can see, hey, here the files come in and one is still missing. So that's something that's very useful, again, transparent with information.
23:43
Another important feature to work remotely is, of course, file locking. Because by default, in the next lot, you can just open and save and edit everything all the time. But there are situations where you want to lock a file
24:01
to avoid collisions. I mean, something like Office documents, that's not important because they can work collaboratively. If you work on an Office document and someone else wants to work on the same Office document, well, then just the second cursor shows up and you have two people in the same document. That's easy. But if you, for example, have a Photoshop file or something
24:21
like that where you really have to download it and edit it locally, then you can lock the file and say, no, now I'm working on it. And then later when you're done, you can upload your changed file and unlock, and the next person can work on it. And of course, if there is a problem because you cannot access a file because it's locked by someone else,
24:41
with integration with the chat system, they can directly ask, hey, what are you doing with the files I needed now? Can you please unlock it? And so on. Then of course, there are also other ways to work with your data. Here are the mobile clients for Android and iOS, also tablets that you can really access and do
25:00
everything, doesn't matter what device you're using. Working remotely doesn't really mean that you're always sitting in front of your computer. You might also running around somewhere with your phone or tablet. And of course, everything should be available there too. Push notifications. If something happens, it's very important.
25:20
Of course, there are respect, your status that I showed earlier. So if you want to set it on do not disturb or unification, you're not getting push notifications, obviously. But for other things, it's actually very nice to be informed about what's going on even, again, if you're not sitting in front of the computer. There's a desktop client where you can synchronize your files to your local machine.
25:44
That's also very useful, for example, if you have a slow internet connection. Just imagine that you have a slow internet connection, especially in Germany. It's very, yeah, a problem. And you just want to work with huge files all the time.
26:01
And every time you click on a file, it needs to be downloaded. And this might take minutes. And this is annoying. But here, everything is synced locally. You can work with your files fast. And every time you save a document, it's uploaded. But asynchronously, you don't have to care. It's just uploading in the background.
26:20
Useful for remote work, again. Data access engine is a feature of Nextcloud where you can mount other data sources as subdirectories into your Nextcloud. That's useful for organizations who still have, like, their SharePoint or their Windows file
26:41
server or some other documents on their local infrastructure. Then you can actually use Nextcloud to make this data ready for remote work. You can mount it in, again, as an administrator or as a user. I don't know. Maybe if you have a file server and you have a, I don't know, marketing share, I don't know.
27:01
You just mount this folder, like for everybody in the marketing group, directly into your Nextcloud. And all the tools that I showed earlier worked then for remote work, even if the file server would not be accessible because it's in the local network. Again, you have ACL support and all the usual things
27:21
that you expect from a file server, of course. The next feature that's very, very important is a search, a full text search with integration with Elastic and several other search engines. And what we have is a unified search in Nextcloud.
27:42
So if you type in, I don't know, Christmas party, you just get all the results where the term Christmas party is part of it. Can be a file, can be a calendar entry, can be a chat message, can be inside a document, and so on. So it's actually useful to find information.
28:01
Again, if you're sitting at home, maybe you work at night because during daytime, you have something else to do. And then there's no one to ask, hey, where's this document? You cannot really ask anyone because you're not sitting in the same office. So search, like enterprise search over all data sources, is super useful and super important.
28:23
Then communication, our team already mentioned. Communication is important. Well, the first thing you need is, I think, a good chat system, a typical group chat system that you can have like rooms and conversations
28:42
based on topics or departments or whatever. Again, lots of us think, well, that's boring. I've been using IRC for like 100 years. Well, as I said, a lot of companies don't. They don't really know why chat has anything to do with work. Group chat systems are super useful and a super good thing.
29:04
Nowadays, Microsoft is pushing Teams, of course, or Slack are the solutions. But again, you want to have something open source and self-hosted like Next Cloud. And this is why we also implement our chat system here. It also has some social aspects built in.
29:25
For example, I think a year ago, we added this emoji feature, this reactions feature that you can react on messages with emojis. And you wouldn't believe what a difference it makes just from a communication and social aspects that you can just like cheer each other up in the chat.
29:42
Hey, great work and smiley and thumbs up and so on. So this is really something that can influence the work dynamics a lot. But this is something we do all the time. Then obviously, you can start a call, do a video call. Again, we should be able to also do it
30:00
from mobile devices. I mean, here's an overlay of a mobile app. You can really walk around and participate in the conversations. You also get push notifications if you called. Yeah, similar to Zoom, Teams, and all the others. Of course, because this is Next Cloud, it's 100% open source. And you can run it wherever you want.
30:21
But obviously, very important. Chat, the same. We have native apps for iOS and Android where you can participate in all these chats, get push notifications if someone sends you a message or there's a reply or something like that on all devices. Lately, we also implemented this in the desktop client.
30:42
So if you're running the desktop client, you also get nice pop-ups with nice notifications. Hey, someone is calling you. And with one button, you can respond or not. Screen sharing, of course important if you want to show some software, some pictures or something with others or work together on a document that's very useful.
31:05
Direct uploading of files into a chat channel which then also lands in Next Cloud files, of course. But then the channel. We also implemented a media view on the sidebar. You can immediately see all the documents that are in a chat room.
31:22
Things like being able to set a time that a call starts at a certain time. Maybe it's a lobby. Can also be good for moderation. Sometimes it's funny. You create a room and you send around the link to the room maybe to customers,
31:41
partners, someone else, and then like a week ahead. And then when the meeting happens, you go into the room and then see, oh, there's already a conversation going on for days between the people that are invited. This can be good or not. So you can lock the room or not as you want. The whole chatting is also something
32:01
that we are Next Cloud integrated into everything else. So if you're looking at a file, if you're adding a document at the moment, there's always the option to have a chat and even a video call in the sidebar. So for example, here, you're looking at a PDF, the PDF viewer, and there's a chat in the sidebar. You can talk with people that are looking at the same document all at the same time.
32:24
And of course, there are other things like a whiteboard where you can then scribble and brainstorm together while being a video call while being in the chat. The next thing that's really important is like editing documents, of course.
32:43
Next up, we have for quite a while a lightweight markdown editor, which is super popular. Everybody loves it. It's used for notes and brainstorming and just simple to-do lists or something like that. It also comes with collaborative editing
33:01
so you can work in the markdown files together. And as I just mentioned, it is integrated with a video calling. So it can be in a video call and chatting and together work collaboratively in this document. That's super useful. Of course, this is only for simple markdown files.
33:22
And in an organization, you also want to work with like real Office files, LibreOffice, Microsoft Office files. And there we have Next Cloud Office, which is based on LibreOffice, based on Collabra Online. We invested a lot of time in the last year
33:40
to make this like good and fast, re-implemented the user interface, for example. So it looks nicer. And there you can really work on all the usual Word, Excel, PowerPoints, whatever files you have lying around in your organization. It should be fully compatible. Also, collaboratively, of course.
34:01
So again, working on the same document while being in a call. That's super useful. This can really replace the classic situation where you're in a meeting. I know it from many years ago. Then companies are sitting in a meeting and then someone has the Word file of whatever it is open,
34:21
projected to the beamer, to the projector, to the wall. And then you sort of working together on the document, but not really. Here you can really work together. Everybody has its own cursor to work on a document. And again, also mobile. So this is a screenshot from a tablet
34:41
where you can also do collaborative editing of the document. Then again, some people might be afraid of data leakage. Like if these documents are flying around like in all the home offices of everybody, how is this secure? There are features where you can say,
35:01
this should not be possible to download this file. And if it is tagged with a certain tag, and if someone does a screenshot and that's automatically a watermark in the document, and so on. So there are ways to protect the data even if you do remote work and everybody has access to everything.
35:23
And of course, you also need other things like knowledge management. So again, next, as an example, we have a simple wiki built in where you can document everything, company handbook, whatever you want to do,
35:40
which is also searchable and available to everybody. Again, very important to provide everybody the information if they do remote work at a different time, so on and so on. So wikis are important. Last but not least, group fair. You need to have a good calendar
36:02
to share a calendar with others. Some organizations still use Outlook or Exchange, of course, becomes more and more a problem. Again, so not open source. You can host it less and less. I mean, Microsoft is moving through everything
36:21
into the cloud, just enough compliant. And again, yeah, you want to have a real open source solution. Calendar with free busy support to see when is everybody available. If you create an invitation,
36:41
you can immediately create a talk room and attach it to the invite. That's very useful. There's a mail interface, of course, to work with your mails. With access to your files, with attachments, or that every attachment you get is automatically saved in NextCloud.
37:01
It's another cool feature. And we implemented something in collaboration with the KDE project, a nice feature which detects tickets and bookings in emails. And for example, here, there's a train ticket attached to the mail, and it's automatically detected, and with one click, you can add it to your calendar,
37:22
for example. So stuff like that can be really, make everything easier. Then, project management. We have a Kanban board application called Deck. That's actually was developed as a fun hobby project
37:43
by someone that we then later hired and are sponsoring now to make it even better. But it's already super, super popular. I assume that most of you are familiar with Kanban board or agile development, which, in my opinion, is a lot better
38:01
than the classic waterfall. So it is a nice tool where you can really do project management collaboratively, again, with everybody. So I really talked a lot about all the tools that are needed, and I think tools are important. Again, a lot of organizations
38:22
really still missing the basic tools, and they are, yeah, desperately need something, and lots of them, lots of organizations switching to Microsoft tools, like Teams at the moment, because they don't know better. But of course, there are better alternatives
38:42
like NextCloud for remote work. But again, tools are not everything. There are also some other learnings that we in the NextCloud really discovered the last two years.
39:00
For example, the social aspect. I mean, this whole situation, again, as I said at the beginning, can be really stressful. Social isolation, yeah, you have the tools to communicate with your coworkers, but it's not really the same as being in the office. There are really a lot of things missing.
39:21
And this is also why NextCloud, we changed a lot of things to compensate for that. So one thing that we do and have is like a virtual water cooler or the virtual coffee machine. So this is like a chat room, which is basically always running, always open.
39:42
And everybody can just like go into this room, and then maybe there's someone else in the room and then just have a casual chat, same as you would meet randomly in the office. And this can be very, yeah, this can be very important to keep the team together.
40:02
Another thing is, and we do this also for lunch, for example, there's also like a lunch room open and everybody who has lunch can go into the room and eat and talk with others, similar as if you would have lunch in your company.
40:20
Another thing we do is our coworking calls. So these are calls where typically people who are in the same team are just in this call, sometimes for hours and hours, and you just work together. This doesn't mean that you need to talk all the time. Actually with developers it's very popular
40:44
that everybody's working on their own code, project, whatever they do, but you're still in the call at the same time. And you hear the others in the background and it gives you really the feeling as if you're in the same room. And if someone has a problem or a question and can speak up, hey, does someone remember this and this,
41:00
and then quickly get an answer, okay, thanks, and you keep on working. That really gives you this feeling as being in the same room. And you have these really long-running calls. Sometimes people switch off video because they make this uncomfortable, but we still have audio in the background and you can just always talk and talk with others.
41:21
And that's something that's really popular. I also do this from time to time. It's actually cool. It gives you the feeling of being together with others. Then of course there are other things like beer o'clock. So we also have calls in the evening scheduled.
41:41
There we sometimes have the policy that we should not talk about work topics, just do a little bit of, yeah, talk about private stuff, just relax a little bit. I think this is getting a little bit less important because really during the lockdown times, most of us really couldn't even leave the place.
42:02
There were no pubs or nothing was open. Here we really have a little bit of social interaction with others, and that's very, yeah, it was very popular and still is. We also have some other, I don't have a slide for that, other calls that happen during the day for non-work-related topics.
42:23
Also have like coffee with calls. So the idea is that some people just say hey every Wednesday at two o'clock. I'm in this room and if someone wants to come and drink a coffee together with me, then let's do that and talk about, I don't know, not work topics,
42:41
not a current project, not a current problem, but just like have a coffee together. That's another thing you can do. Okay, this leads me to the summary. So my perspective, this whole concept of remote work can work very well if you have the right processes,
43:04
you have the right tools, the right company culture where certain things are okay, aren't accepted, and it can be really, it's not just a workaround. From my perspective, it can be really the future of work.
43:22
Again, working in an office also comes with a lot of problems from commuting, which takes a lot of time, from also the requirement that everybody has to live in the same city, which is a huge restriction. For example, next club, we are able to hire people wherever they are
43:41
and this just gives you a lot more, yeah, you can work with the best people that don't need to be in the same office in the same city with you. So remote work can be really good if the right processes, the right mindset, and the right tools are used. It's more family-friendly, of course.
44:01
Again, if organized correctly, and yeah, as I said, you can really work with the best people because making the hard requirement that everybody lives like whatever, 30 minutes away from your office, that's a huge restriction. And from my perspective, this is a huge learning out of the pandemic
44:21
and something that can be the future and hopefully alter the future for more classic companies, not only open source companies. Thanks a lot.
44:42
So I'm not sure how this works here. I still have a little bit of time. Can we do a Q&A if someone has questions or feedback or ideas?
45:22
We don't have this in next load yet, that you have basically like VIP contacts or something. I think there might be features in, I think there are features in Android and iOS nowadays where you can do that. We don't have this at the moment, but we are making this feature better all the time.
45:40
So for example, for the next version, we will add a feature that you can check it on if you want, and then it goes automatically to not disturb if outside your office hours, for example. So we have work life balance and we're trying to make this better, but this different settings for different groups,
46:02
we don't have this yet. That's a cool idea. Someone else? You mentioned company culture and in my opinion, tools are one side.
46:21
It's good to have good tools, but to change one's attitude is important too in order to work with this tool successful. Do you know if there are any educations
46:41
in changing people's attitude to work together with tools? Good question. Not sure I'm the expert there, but I agree that this transformation process also needs education and you need to explain it
47:01
and you need to bring it to more organizations to work in a more modern way. Yeah, that's outside my expertise I have to say. We don't really do training and next level building the tools. I agree that people need to be trained. I mean, earlier this example with managers,
47:22
I think this is the most important thing that just really have to manage the people differently, not time-based but result-based. But yeah. I agree, we need training and education for that, but that's not what we do at next load. I think there was someone there.
47:47
Hello. First, thank you for providing tools not as crappy as for instance MS Teams and MS SharePoint. I have two questions related to the first part of your talk. What do you think, how does this method you mentioned
48:02
affect the number of management of managers in the software development enterprise and how does it affect the work for these managers?
48:22
Good question. I think the role of managers that change. So, I mean, obviously there will be less classic meetings, in-person meetings. There can be still be calls,
48:41
but a call is of course fundamentally different because, okay, I have to confess, maybe it's the same for others, that sometimes I don't pay full attention to every call. So that's something you can do. You can follow a conversation, the status meeting about something, but you can still like with, I don't know,
49:00
30% of your brain check what emails come in or something, right? That's something that's not really possible if you have to sit in the same room and you're forced to be there. So that's something that's changing a bit. So this whole conversations and meetings, they change. Again, if they're also asynchronous and chat messages, you can really think about it and respond to it later.
49:25
So that's another thing. I mean, I don't know. For Next Cloud, the role of management or team leads really is changing. So it's a lot more about actually the results itself.
49:42
So if there's a project, something you want to do, then having conversations with project management tools and chat messages and documents about how to get it done. So I think Next Cloud manages to become more and more like also the managers of the topic, not management because of management.
50:00
And we don't really have that many people who are just, I don't know, talking the whole day. I don't know. So things are changing definitely, yeah. Okay, no more questions. And thanks a lot.