Worked in Germany all last week, really the first time I'd worked extensively with someone around my level technically. Great, great experience. On a basic level it's just closing the normal feedback loop for discussion, but it's much more than that. You establish a sort of shorthand about certain things so that discussions about them can be both very potent and very short. This might seem really basic and it's something that happens whenever you spend a good deal of time with someone, but I'd only really experienced this previously in a social setting or a non-technical work setting.
This has the unfortunate side-effect that I feel quite deprived now working at home by myself. The next few weeks are going to be a serious PITA.
I need to get a contract finished up in the next few days, but then I should be able to put some cool changes into both OpenInteract and SPOPS and really release them under the Artistic/GPL. (They're available now, but only if you know where to look. Don't do that just yet :)
Hopefully we'll be able to convince our managers that working together like this for a week at a time pays off handsomely in the quality (and quantity) of work done as well as for generating new ideas. Next time, he comes here though :)
(Originally posted elsewhere)