It’s been a little more than a year since BackerKit went surprise-fully-remote due to the pandemic. In that time, the Product team has learned a lot about taking care of ourselves, each other, and our customers while working remotely. We wanted to share some of the things that have made remote life better for us and a few practices you may want to try with your team.

Some context for you

We are spread across East Coast and West Coast time, but keep West Coast hours, so some of these things will not work if your team is distributed globally and mostly works asynchronously. (Prior to the pandemic, we were all colocated in the Bay Area except for one dev in beautiful Montclair, New Jersey.)

BackerKit had also already been doing remote pairing once a week on our team’s official Work From Home day, so we’d already settled on Tuple for screen sharing and got the team outfitted with comfy gaming headset/mic combos. 

Getting started

One of the best things we did when the shelter-in-place started was explicitly set a goal of doing six experiments to see how we could improve our experience pairing full-time remotely. We love to iterate, and this was no exception. Two of our early wins came from this mandate: the second screen and daily diff.

Second Screen

Every blog post about remote pairing will tell you to have the person’s face visible. Most of them will tell you to do it on a second screen. I was initially very skeptical of having video on while pairing. I was worried that my Zoom fatigue would be even worse from having someone stare at my face literally all day. But it turns out that when you’re pairing in person, you primarily focus on the code on the screen while occasionally glancing at your pair’s face. Setting up a second screen with your pair’s face means you can do the same thing, from the safety of your own homes! I am now 100% Team Second Screen For Video, and whenever I don’t have it (uncharged iPad, etc.), I miss those subtle cues that you get from seeing someone’s expressions. 

Everyone got a refurbished iPad for their second screen, but once I got an external monitor, I started using the big monitor for sharing code and my laptop screen for the hangout. We use Tuple for screen sharing and audio, and use a muted Google Hangout for video.

Daily Diff

After our cross-functional standup ends, the devs stay on and do a live review of the previous day’s commits on GitHub. Some teams do Daily Diff silently, reading through the code themselves, but we’ve found it most effective for our team to have a rotating facilitator share their screen and talk through the code in each commit. The devs who did the work can add any color that they think would be useful, and light debate sometimes ensues about the trade-offs of a given approach. If something merits more than a quick back-and-forth, we move it to our weekly dev team meeting to discuss in more depth. As a pairing shop, most of our programming happens out loud. When we were co-located, we got a lot out of the background chatter of the other pairs’ thought processes. Now that we’re remote, that information is gone, and daily diff helps fill its role pretty well.

Experimentation via goals

When we’re figuring out what our quarterly goals should be, we often are able to identify an area that we’d like to improve, but don’t necessarily know specifically what we want to change. So we’ve embraced the ambiguity and, with much success, have had goals to improve something. We’re currently trying out new ways to incorporate explicit technical learning into our process (so far: mob refactoring sessions, dev hack days, discussing conference talks). Having the goal of simply trying and evaluating a number of experiments allows us to play with new ideas without feeling tied to them for a whole quarter.

Pairing, even for short durations

At BackerKit, we pair nearly all the time and rotate pairs every day. But meetings are still part of our reality, and changes in responsibility and environment (hello children home all day) have also been a reality because of the pandemic. Both of which can result in some days feeling pretty disjointed. Challenging our black and white thinking about whether to start pairing with someone — even just for an hour — was really useful. Although we still sometimes solo for an hour here and there, recognizing that there’s still plenty of value in pairing with someone for an hour or half an hour helped us feel connected and productive.

Embracing hand signals

Tuple, our screen-sharing product of choice, didn’t initially handle two people calling each other simultaneously very elegantly. It was confusing. Since we usually had video going (on those second screens), we developed hand signals to mean “I’m calling you” and “I’m waiting for your call.”

We later realized this wasn’t strictly necessary since we could simply unmute the video before we started the Tuple session, but it is still fun to use silly hand signals sometimes.

As a whole company, we have also adopted a practice of holding up a crossed pointer and middle finger to indicate visually that we have an idea to share. This has been really helpful for cutting down on instances of everyone trying to talk at once or accidentally jumping in before someone is done (since it can even be hard in person to know when someone’s finished speaking). We don’t usually keep a formal stack, though, and also haven’t come up with an actual name for the gesture. We alternate between saying things like “Ian is doing the finger thingy,” “I see Lindsey’s crossed fingers,” and briefly trying to name the gesture “dibs” (i.e., “I see Max has dibs”). 

New company goals

We had a company all-hands shortly after the Bay Area shelter-in-place began, and in it, Maxwell Salzberg, our CEO, laid out our revised company goals. They were:

1. Take care of yourself
2. Take care of each other
3. Take care of our customers

It was incredibly meaningful to know that all of BackerKit, from the top down, was prioritizing our humanity and understood that it was going to be a tough time, while not forgetting that our customers needed our support, too. Throughout this rollercoaster of a year, we’ve tried to prioritize our mental health and have encouraged each other to do what is needed to make it through. (As a parent of two small children, I feel like I hit the lottery, as my team embraced appearances by babies and toddlers in standup and pairing sessions.)

Iteration 4 life

Hopefully, some of these practices could be useful for your team! We don’t know what the future of remote work looks like at BackerKit once it’s safe to be in an office again, but using experiments to improve our process is definitely here to stay, no matter what.

To learn more about what the BackerKit team is working on and get crowdfunding tips, make sure to sign up for our Community Newsletter.

The post How Experimentation Kept Us Shipping Code and Growing Through a Pandemic appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

During Gen Con 2019 we got to spend some quality time with Tom Vasel from Dice Tower — a network of video and audio podcasts dedicated to board games. We discussed the importance of building a dedicated community, the benefits of crowdfunding a tabletop game, and the value of BackerKit throughout the process.

Be sure to learn more from Tom Vasel on Dice Tower and their youtube channel to gain access to an unparalleled catalogue of podcasts, video reviews, top 10 lists, and much more.

And check out the most recent Kickstarter campaign for Dice Tower: Season 15.

Stay tuned to the BackerKit Community Newsletter to get more creator interviews, convention coverage, and crowdfunding advice!

The post Dice Tower Interview with Tom Vasel appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

When we asked Peak Design founder Peter Dering what it would be like to run a Kickstarter campaign without BackerKit he replied—

“I dunno, could you run your business without emails these days?”

Who is Peter Dering?

He’s a Minnesota-born product designer who specializes in photographic accessories and innovative bag design. He has a gift for solving unique challenges and presenting solutions in intelligent and useful ways. His company Peak Design is a direct reflection of his dedication and passion.

If you break down the top 12 most funded design projects on Kickstarter, Peak Design shows up an impressive 4 times. Over the years they’ve successfully delivered to over 110,000 backers raising well over $20 million across all of their campaigns. Needless to say, they are one of the most successful crowdfunding creators of all time.

Peak Design

Peak Design started in 2010 when Peter took a 3-month trip around the world. During the trip he discovered that traveling with a DSLR camera wasn’t very fun. DSLRs capture amazing images but you have to carry around a 2-pound, oddly shaped device that has to be within easy reach at all times.

When Peter returned home, he immediately started working on a solution that would become the Peak Design Capture Camera Clip, a rigid camera holder that can secure a DSLR to any belt or strap. He launched the project on Kickstarter in 2011 and found immediate success raising $364,698 from 5,258 backers.

Today, Peak Design is a major player in the world of photographic accessories and bag design. They’re consistently crafting innovative, intelligent, and useful products to their growing community.

“Our growth has been fueled by a continued reliance on Kickstarter as a product launching platform.”

Peter’s challenge—Delivering to thousands of backers

“There’s a lot of people who might do 9 things out of 10 right, but if they screw up the fulfillment then they don’t open up themselves to repeat success.”

Due to their high backer count, Peak Design became an early BackerKit customer and used our pledge management software and expert customer service to handle all their backer management needs. 

“BackerKit fills a number of essential roles but, with respect to fulfillment, just having the confidence that all the information is correct, that it’s done by the users, and that it’s all organized in the right format and not having to worry about that is just huge.”

Peter’s solution—Removing the hassle and guesswork

“When we made a decision to do all of the data work through BackerKit, it was like, ‘wow!’ It just flows through and gets the job done, so we can keep on working in the very, very busy day jobs we already have.”

BackerKit provided the pledge management tools needed to keep fulfillment on track and allowed Peak Design employees to focus on manufacturing. Being able to manipulate information, process backers in batches, and get accurate data via detailed Backer Surveys supercharged operations.

Results—Solidifying a strong reputation

“It’s an easy business decision for me because it pays for itself several times over in actual revenue and profits and then all of the efficiency that you gain on top of that is just irreplaceable.”

Making sure backers get the right rewards at the right time is key to building a loyal customer base that will be excited to back your next campaign. You build and earn a strong reputation during your successful crowdfunding campaign. But if you mismanage the fulfillment stage, you are losing some of that reputation and blocking yourself off from repeat success.

Over the years, Peak Design has earned millions of dollars delivering to thousands of loyal backers. They trust BackerKit to not only take care of their growing community, but to honor and help build their reputation.

Travel Tripod is Peak Design’s latest Kickstarter success reaching over 15,000 backers and earning over $7 million in just a few weeks. Check out their campaign page today. According to Backer Tracker, they’re trending to reach over $10 million.

Launching your campaign on Kickstarter/Indiegogo soon?

Chat with us this week!

Replay “Are you ready to launch on Kickstarter”webinar!

The post Peak Design Talks Crowdfunding Success appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.

CMON is quite literally the most prolific tabletop studio and publisher on Kickstarter to date. They’ve created 29 successful campaigns on the platform raising nearly 40 million dollars thanks to such hits as Zombicide and Massive Darkness. As each new tabletop game releases, CMON recruits a dedicated fanbase eager to consume their next project.

Enter HATE, CMON’s latest tabletop experience inspired by the dark and evocative work found in acclaimed artist Adrian Smith’s Chronicles of Hate graphic novel series. Smith has created a stunningly dark and violent world that captures the imagination through unparalleled visual storytelling doubling as an impressive art  book. Anyone who’s seen Smith’s art will understand why CMON and Guillotine Games have partnered with him to bring us HATE. The beauty of running this campaign on Kickstarter is having the ability to remain 100% true to the original source material without stripping out any of the atmosphere and brutality.Here’s the catch. HATE is a Kickstarter exclusive campaign meaning if you don’t back now, your chances of missing out are extremely high. There are only hours left to lend your support and secure your copy of HATE. Here at BackerKit we’ve seen hundreds of tabletop games reach success on Kickstarter, and HATE is definitely top tier stuff. All the elements of a solid tabletop experience are included. Between the aforementioned artwork, the stellar and exquisitely detailed miniatures (there are so many included!), and the immersive 2-6 player game mechanics, HATE has all the ingredients needed to be an unforgettable game to add to your library.

Take control of your tribe and lead them in battle against your opponents. Each battle pits two tribes controlled by different players, clashing against each other to achieve objectives, massacre the enemy, and reap rewards from blood and land. As the Chronicle unfolds, players engage each other in numerous clashes in an effort to defend or conquer territories, trying to be the ultimate Tyrant and rule the wastes of the world. While the HATE core box initially allowed for up to 4 players to fight through a Chronicle together, more tribes have since been unlocked allowing the game to expand to up to 6 players. -Description form the Publisher

Time is running out, so head to the exclusive HATE Kickstarter campaign page now to make a pledge, learn more, and follow along with important campaign updates until the campaign ends on February 7th, 2018 at 3PM PST.

The post CMON’s “HATE” Kickstarter Campaign Ends Soon! appeared first on Crowdfunding Blog & Resources | BackerKit.