> Camaraderie, speed: Have fun, do retreats, avoid burnout
Or, alternatively, respect personal boundaries and don't force coworkers to have social outings.
I really wish "work is just work" was more popular. There is an empathetic way to do this that isn't just treating people as a number but also not forcing socializing outside of the context of work.
Yes to avoiding burnout. No to thinking a retreat is the answer to that.
Sure Figjam is great but my anecdata is that a majority of the value of the whiteboard is the discussion as it happens not the resulting artifact. Lucid works better for that because it let's you easily frame things into slides (yes, a section in figjam is usable for this but it's not the same).
The concept being that you break things down and layer in details so the evolution is explained similar to the train of thought from live sessions.
I've been remote almost exclusively since 2012 and have used everything out there... the biggest thing that makes an improvement with remote comms? A very high quality microphone with a high quality compressor / gate (hardware, even) and using Mumble / Teamspeak / etc with a good codec where everyone can hear everyone speaking at the same time with low latency. That's what we lost from copper phones and it's exponentially worse in Zoom where you can't tell when someone is trying to interrupt you with the auditory cues. It really makes a big difference.
I'm an extrovert so I love video / cams on but really audio is all that is needed when paired with a tool like Figjam and getting high quality audio makes a remarkable difference.
The kind of people in these small teams are not ones to think "work is just work".