Open Thread: Can Technology Ever Bridge the Gap for Remote Teams?

Entrepreneur and VC Mark Suster believes that “in-person” teams are much more effective than those that collaborate remotely. Suster says that it’s hard for distributed teams to communicate effectively when so much communication is non-verbal, and notes how difficult it is to develop company norms, beliefs and, ultimately, culture, without office chatter. Suster is talking from his experiences with startup companies, but many of his points would also apply to more established businesses, too.

However, thanks to the Internet, working in a distributed team is easier now than it ever was before. Technologies such as video conferencing, IRC and IM, and collaboration software, like Yammer and Socialtext, are helping to bring distributed teams closer together. And not only are the tools that that we use getting better by the day, but our knowledge of how best to use them to work effectively is improving, too.

So, given that many of our readers have personal experience of working in distributed teams I thought I would post an open thread asking for your opinion: Do you agree with Mark Suster’s view that “in-person” teams are more effective than distributed teams? If so, can technology (such as collaboration apps, VoIP and video chat) ever bridge that gap for distributed teams?