The regional AMITOS teams have been trying to kick-start collaboration efforts for a long time. Most of our effort so far has been focused on standardizing our programming languages and development environments so we can mix and match developers across teams. The idea is that if we all have the same skillsets, we won't have to spend as much time learning to be productive on other region's projects.

There are so many differences between the teams, though, that unifying on a set of technologies is going to be tough. What I think we need to do first is lay down some groundwork for more frequent communication and exchange amongst the regions. If we start talking and sharing more, the standards will come with time.

For now, I've identified three tools that we've been having success with in the Pacific region that I'd love to see us all rally around to improve regional communications.

Tool #1: IRC

In recent years a new wave of technologists have started using IRC for quick and dirty communication. There are well-populated channels dedicated to pretty much every major piece of software and web technology. Developers hang out in these channels to discuss the tools they use and pose questions and problems to their colleagues. We’ve gotten on board and started idling in #amitos on irc.freenode.net. Now we no longer clog up each other's inboxes with disruptive, distracting emails or inane back-and-forths.

Tool #2: Blogs

One day I'd like to see an aggregated feed of blogs written by AMITOS employees with all of our ideas and day-to-day programming tidbits shared and recorded for posterity. Blogs are a great way to collect your thoughts and formulate them into intelligible communications that can benefit the group.

Tool #3: GitHub

For the uninitiated, Git is a distributed version control system that is taking the open source world by storm and is poised to dethrone Subversion as the most popular VCS on the block. GitHub is social software that links up developers and projects by tracking their Git repositories and the relations between them. With Git and GitHub, we hope to revolutionize our development workflow by adopting practices from the world of open source software development.