fleet/handbook/company/communications.md

Communication

Fleet's open-core style of communication is part of the company's DNA and essential to moving Fleet into the future.

Meetings

Plan to join meetings on time. At Fleet, we start on time and do not wait for folks to join.
Our meetings are conducted over zoom, please join with a working microphone and with your camera on whenever possible.
Being even a few minutes late can make a big difference and slow your meeting counterparts down. When in doubt, show up a couple of minutes early.

Spend the first few minutes of a meeting being present and making small talk. Since we are all remote, it's easy to miss out on hallway chatter and human connections that happen in meatspace.
Use this time together during the first minute to say "Hi!" Then you can jump into the topics to be discussed.

Turning on your camera allows for more complete and intuitive verbal and non-verbal communication. Feel free to leave your camera on or turn it off when joining meetings with new participants you might not be familiar with yet. Turn your camera on when you lead or cohost a meeting. In an all-remote company, “face time” matters.

Before scheduling a meeting ask yourself:

1. Can this information be presented async?

   • Is there another way to distribute this info or align on a course of action that doesn't take valuable time away from customers, projects, or personal time? Could you create a Google Doc and share it with would-be attendees? If the info can be documented it should be. Could the info be sent in Slack or by email?

2. Do I have all the information needed to schedule this meeting?

Internal meeting scheduling

Fleet uses the Zoom add-on for Google Calendar to schedule meetings (exceptions are customers that are non-negotiably required to use a different tool) when we create calendar events. Our Zoom meetings are configured to let participants join before the host arrives, to make sure meetings start on time even if the host isn't there.

To schedule a meeting within Fleet:

• To add a Zoom meeting to a calendar event, click the "Add video conferencing" dropdown and select "Zoom Meeting." Google Calendar will automatically add the Zoom meeting details and instructions to join the event.
• Enter the @fleetdm.com emails for each participant into the "Add guests" box in Google Calendar, and the calendar availability for each participant will appear in your view.
• Select a meeting time, the participants will automatically be invited and a video conference will be attached to the invite (this can save a lot of communication overhead when scheduling with multiple participants).

It is important to set your workinghours in Google Calendar and block out any personal time/events/PTO, so that team members do not inadvertently schedule a time when you are not available.

• Many team members use the free tier of reclaim.ai to synchronize personal event times (without event details) into their work calendars. It is also common practice to block out time for focused work.

Modifying an event organized by someone else

To edit an event where someone else at Fleet is the organizer, you can first subscribe to their calendar in Google Calendar and then edit the event on their calendar. Your edits will automatically apply to all attendees. This works because every Fleetie grants edit access to everyone else at Fleet as part of onboarding.

External meeting scheduling

When scheduling external meetings, provide external participants with a Calendly link to schedule with the relevant internal participants. If you need a Calendly account, reach out to mikermcneil via Slack.