I’M THUMBING THROUGH pages of notes and hours of audio recordings that I compiled during the Grow Remote Ireland 2023 Summit. It’s refreshing and invigorating.
I’m posting this short blog to thank Tracy Keogh, John Riordan, and a score of volunteers to making the Summit a top class event.
It will take me several days to unpack an assortment of images, videos, and transcripts I have from the event in Portlaoise. I wrote key thoughts in my Traveler's Notebook and used a Rode Wireless Go microphone (the black plastic device with the fuzzy windshield covering in a previous post) to record snippets during many of the talks and panel discussions.
I've easily a half day's work ahead of me if I lean into the assortment of handwritten notes, photos, audio clips, and transcripts from the day. I think I'll take that deep dive because I want to contribute to and feel the energy of Grow Remote Ireland.
I left the marvelous venue thinking I should do more to add my voice to the grow remote chorus. I'm going to start doing that with local media and internally through our university news network. I expect to have 20 pieces of content shared in my Grow Remote Ireland photoset.
This blog post is a scratch space for me to transpose some of the discoveries Otter.ai surfaced from several hours of recordings I made while listening in the audience. Here are some of those high points, generated by artificial intelligence, that I believe should be refashioned into a series of posts about the value of remote work in Ireland.
Running a remote office
- Who are the people most attracted to remote work?
- The decision to hire locally and internationally.
- The impact of collaboration on performance.
- Hiring for different roles.
- Dealing with positive feedback.
- Optimization at the cost of empathy.
- The challenges of remote sales and onboarding.
- How to remove the barriers to employment.
- Flexible working in general.
- How to keep employees engaged.
- Remote working vs in-office promotion.
- The size of the company and the remote working policy.
- How often do you go into the office?
- What are people missing in the workplace?
- How do we set up moments of connection?
Challenges for Ireland
- Challenges and opportunities for Ireland as a global destination for remote working.
- Rural Ireland is dying and the government don't care.
- How to remove the barriers to employment.
- Building more housing.
- Offering stronger tax breaks.
The political dimension
- How do politicians feel about remote working?
- Brussels’s perspective on remote working.
- Rural areas and their opportunities.
- The problem with the housing situation.
- Investing with employers and tax breaks.
- The progress made in Ireland.
- Ireland has gone from a protected closed economy to an open free market economy.
- The importance of focusing on indigenous entrepreneurs.
- Empowering remote workers and real estate.
- The long-term solution to the problem of space.
- Things we need to focus on in the budget.
- The size of the company and the remote working policy.
Enhancing Grow Remote Ireland
- How to become a Grow Remote volunteer
- Educate the next generation about remote work.
- How to keep employees engaged.
- Remote working vs in-office promotion.
- People need knowledge, skills and resources.
- How to make remote work more accessible.
- The importance of having a local planning committee.
- The importance of being a community person.
- Connecting rural communities with remote work.
- How do you build a network?
- How to create good communities that welcome people.
- Building resilience into the community.
- Getting involved in the local community.
- Bringing the team back together.
I plan to offer separate posts on each of these main topics. But first, I'm exploring a treasure trove of information inside the Grow Remote Slack Channel. It's much more vibrant than when I joined it in 2020.
[Bernie Goldbach teaches digital transformation on the Clonmel Digital Campus for the Technological University of the Shannon. Tracy Keogh is pictured handing out voting arrows to a discussion panel.]
