Ask HN: What tools are game changers for communication in fully remote teams?

Gather (gather.town) looks very promising as a tool for physicalized interactions, although I haven’t had a chance to use it for real yet.

Meeting formats that aren’t just people taking turns talking, but instead involve breaking up into small groups (Gather or breakout rooms) and collaboratively manipulating shared representations (Miro, Google Docs, Figma, Tuple).

call some one, talk about a specific topic. maybe e-mail a document before or after. on the phone you are not distracted by the notifications and the emoji's, you focus on the topic at hand.

voice first, async comms. automatic transcriptions. automatically tags team members mentioned by voice. and they're absolutely meticulous about getting feedback from customers.

The app digitizes handwritten content in real time, making it an excellent way to share a real whiteboard (or other surface) with remote teams. Remote participants can contribute digital content and the combined contents can be then shared/saved as needed.

There are many excellent digital-first tools out there but our goal was to bring some more reality back to our shared remote experience. There are some tasks that are simply better served by analog tools. Integrations with many existing apps are forthcoming; you can think of STB as a connector of digital/analog content.

I think always having an agenda attached to a meeting and sending that out in advance really helps.

Documenting the outcome of meetings and action items where everyone on the call can see them is super helpful.