Moving house with the help of a group of friends is an interesting exercise in collective improvisation and coordination. Everybody can help with most of the jobs at hand, so the challenge is to keep people busy in a meaningful way, to make the best use of the physical and intellectual resources available, while keeping people happy and engaged.

Sounds familiar? The Moving House model does apply to other types of group projects, including software development. Adhocracy, Asynchronous Collaboration and a can-do attitude, as practiced in Open Source communities, are key elements that enable groups that have no formal structure to collaborate efficiently and smoothly - like when helping friends moving house.

In times where remote collaboration is more important than ever, we'll dig into the analogies between a simple group activity, such as moving lots of stuff from one place to another, and more complex projects. This will help us discover how to turn team members into "autonomous agents" with just the right amount of group coordination to make things happen.

This talk will help both managers and group members better understand how to collaborate remotely, and how to avoid the trap of "reproducing office life remotely" that is too common with remote collaboration in Covid-19 times.