Host John Jonas (Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast, Ep. 343) describes members of his Online Filipino Specialists (OFS) team — an informal “Negros chapter” of colleagues who met in person in Dumaguete while others visited Manjuyod. He reads a team-written account about the dinner, live music, and how some team members kept working (e.g., Arlene checking email), and reflects on the value of meeting remote coworkers in person and his own difficulty traveling to the Philippines. The episode emphasizes relationships built through long-term remote collaboration.
Chapters
Welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast that's dedicated to making you better at working with OFS online Filipino specialists. This is episode 343, my OFS team finally meeting each other. So in my last episode, I talked about Vince and his trip to Manjuyod, the story that he wrote to me. So Manjuyod is actually in the same province where another set of people that work for us live. This is Lugie and his wife. And so Vince, when they went, decided it would be good for them to meet. They've never met each other. They don't live that far apart. And so they planned a dinner for everybody to get together. And so there's. You're gonna see, as I get into this, there's a picture of eight people. Hopefully, if you're watching this on YouTube, you get to see this picture. All eight of these adults work for us. There's a kid in the picture too. They obviously don't work for us, but the eight adults do. These people have been working together for years and have never met because they all just work from home. So they planned a dinner, they got together, they sent me pictures. Let me read this to you. And so as the plan for our family outing to Manja Yacht was set, Jen and Arlene also made some plans to meet with our co workers. We just couldn't let the chance of not meeting each other when we were just an hour apart. We live on the same island, Negros, and we haven't met yet, Lugie and I, even though we've been working together all these years. And so finally, here's the OnlineJobs PH Team Negros chapter. So just so you know, the Negros chapter, Negros is the island they all live on. But we have about 40 people all over the Philippines and in different places. These people all live close together and they're calling themselves the Negros chapter. We met for an early dinner in another city called Dumaguete. It's an hour's drive from where we stayed and just about 15 minutes from where they live. Until that day, I really did not know what Loogie looked like and that he and Sydney were husband and wife. So Luggie and Sydney have worked for us for a while, and Vince didn't realize they were husband and wife. They are such a lovely couple, and meeting them was the highlight of my day. Luigi and I can't help discussing work, our tech stacks and new stuff, and most of all, what onlinejobs PH meant for us. All these years, Jen was So excited about meeting them all and most of her time was spent talking. She forgot to eat. We ended up asking to have her food put in a doggie bag. Arlene still had some support duty then, so she occasionally checked emails and worked, which, if I had known this, obviously I would have given Arlene the time off. But they didn't say anything about any of this until afterwards. So this is kind of what you expect when you hire someone, hire an ofs. They're going to get their work done regardless of what's going on. Even if they're having a business dinner meeting. She's still working with her laptop at the table. He continues. After dinner, we decided to move to a nearby place for drinks and live music. Loogie and Sydney were chilling. Jocelyn and Jen can't help but continue to talk shop. We went our separate ways a couple hours later. A bit tipsy. Except for the designated drivers, all were in good spirits. We agreed to see each other again, to go places to meet with others on the team, like Joven in Davao or Paolo and Cebu. It's always nice to put a face to a name, to hear a voice when you're reading their emails. Perhaps all of onlinejobs PH can have a team outing. Just a thought, which that just a thought was, to me, just a thought. I really wish that I was there to join them. It is so. It's so cool to meet the people that, that you work with and it's so nice to just see them outside of their work setting, to see pictures of them and to see them doing good things and getting together and having fun. And then Arlene doing her work while at the table. I mean, that's what you get when you hire a rock star. And all of these people are rock stars. They're really amazing and we love them and we love the work that they do and I hope they get to listen to this podcast because I really do love the work that these people do for us. The getting together thing, well, that's harder for me. I'm a homebody. I went to the Philippines in 2010. We spent. I took my family and we spent a month on the beach. But for me to travel there again is. But for me to travel there again, away from my family, gosh, that's, that's really hard. Now. I could take my family again, but I had big kids now, 2010, I had little kids. And little kids are easier than big kids who are in high school and have sports and responsibilities and jobs and all that stuff. But if you can get over there and meet your team. Wow. It's amazing.
