[leetrout]

Not quite.

Have an onsite team or have hybrid setups that bring people within geographic areas together. Nothing replaces getting around a physical whiteboard in a physical space.

Context is in the original statement that retreats are a fix for burnout.

[nradov]

I used to agree with that but now we have tools like Figma that actually work better than a whiteboard once you understand how to use them correctly.

[leetrout]

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.