Show HN: A support network for working remote – my idea to overcome cabin fever | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: A support network for working remote – my idea to overcome cabin fever

hi.remotetogether.com

115 pointsob1gman41 comments

Gotta say - Well done.

I'm a remote guy and have been for over 10 years (different companies) and being a part of a community targeted at "just remotes" is something I've wanted for a long time.

The site is polished; extremely so for something "brand new". It was a joy to write my first two posts, setup my profile and read literally everything on the site this evening. Little things like the activation e-mail not ending up in my spam folder in GMail (which seems to happen with every "Show HN" activation message) make me believe you've got a bit of experience doing things like this.

There haven't been that many forum/HN/Reddit-style sites that I've actually been excited about -- I'll be checking back in frequently and I hope you manage to build up an active community as a result of the work you've put into this.

The polish, the forums at least, are probably due to using what looks like Discourse to power the discussions.

This is kind of the story behind RemoteTogether for anyone interested!

http://hi.remotetogether.com/t/remotetogether-why-now/20

You should write a little more why people should put there trust in your website. I mean, it's basically a forum, right? What should make me believe that you are cabable of forming a community that helps each other in these regards? What does it have that Reddit, Stackoverflow and HN don't offer already? Etc.

E.g. we have an aggregator for remote workers. We will gather contracts for you, help with book keeping, have a project manager and corresponding tools prepared (issue tracker, wiki, chat channels) etc. To not make it an ad, I won't say our name. But I just want to show you that people already spend a lot of effort in that area. Certainly the demands we have working remotely are not all met already. But right now it's hard to see what makes your site interesting.

I love this idea. To come back to this page do I have to go through HN? I tried going directly to hi.remotetogether.com straight from a new tab and it does not work.

Unfortunately I will probably be not contributing at this current moment, as I am in the camp of "looking for remote work" and not "currently employed doing remote work" :)

Any chance you could send me a screenshot of what you're getting? info@remotetogether.com

hi.remotetogether.com should work. Got to resolve this problem. :)

http://i.imgur.com/COZJe0p -- looks like the main landing page!

Looks like an issue with DNS. Resolving now. :)

I see what you did there

Thanks for pointing it out to me, twas so subtle I almost missed it

Seems very similar to https://nomadforum.io/

Not all remote workers are nomadic, but all digital nomads work remotely.

Yeah - very true. I would say if you're a digital nomad you should join https://join.nomadlist.com/.

Looks like a great community and if I were a Digital Nomad I would join. But if you work from home I'd love to have a network around that... And that's why I've created RemoteTogether.

Because you are dealing with passwords, I'd really recommend forcing HTTPS, which unfortunately doesn't seem to be available at all.

Other than that, I like it!

I'm going to set that up tomorrow. I honestly wasn't sure what kind of feedback I would get, but so far most people have been excited.

If you want to send me your email I'll let you know when I've finished setting it up. Thx for the feedback! And good call!

Sounds great! It should be on my profile now.

Hey, I'm starting my first remote gig this week. How very, very timely.

Awesome! Sign up. Would love to talk more!

Really nice forum! It's quite difficult to find the remote community, there are a lot of forums with communities related to it (digital nomads, nomads, freelancers) but not for remotes.

I am a remote worker at http://www.whitesmith.co/ and since the beginning, that remote work is part of our core culture. And I hope you don't mind but I would like to share with you the way our remote workers have a presence in the office: https://remotes.in. Started to be an internal tool but right now is open to all remote workers, our goal is to create the biggest remote HQ in the world! This tool is in beta version and I would love if you try and give us feedback :)

Is this a community/ support group or your startup? Noticed you are calling yourself 'founder'.

So hi.remotetogether.com is a community and support group, but I'm going to eventually create products around RemoteTogether.

The forum is just the start. Also have some podcasts coming soon. Sorry for the confusion.

Thank you for the honesty. I am always looking for support groups as a remote worker and occasional traveler, but to be honest myself, I believe there are too many opportunists/ profiteers in the digital nomad 'industry', and it simply annoys me. I will not be participating, but I wish you good luck.

For anyone interested, r/digitalnomad is probably the best 'support group' currently.

yeah - no problem. This isn't quite for Digital Nomads really. Honestly, I think digital nomads already have a community... I work from home. I don't work from other countries really.

So my vision is to create a community of Remote workers. http://levels.io has done a great job of creating a community for Digital Nomads. RemoteTogether is more for the people who work from home and spend upwards of 10 hours at home working.

Levels also has had a fair share of backlash in the DN community for being said profiteer ($100 to join a Slack group, for example. $20 for 14 page 'guides' for cities with info mostly taken from free forums, etc.). If he's your model, go for it. I would just add an asterisk to your use of 'support group' or 'community.'

Hmm. I didn't quite realize that, honestly. I don't plan to monetize hi.remotetogether.com. I could maybe see ads at some point on there? But that's about it. I have other monetization strategies. Like create an actual product.

Also, I would say what Levels.io has done with nomadslist.com is exceptional. I've used it for a couple of trips (Vacations - DigitalNomad-ing) I've been on. I realize you may not be a big fan of him, but he's done some good! Just food for thought.

Thanks for the responses though. Very. Very. Very. Insightful. Things I hadn't considered.

The StackOverflow business model might be an interesting case study: the goal has usually [1] been community first and any monitization being done using that community's exhaust fumes. I suppose there is a plausible case that that's Hacker News's business model too...attract people who might apply to YC, get in, and build a successful startup.

[1]: StackExchange version 1.0 was an exception.

Completely agree!

your confirm email field isn't big enough for my email weird because your main one is.

I had the same problem before realizing it is actually a "username" field. Maybe add a "confirm email" textbox because most of us are probably used to having one on all website signup pages?

I'm looking at this right now! :)

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Getting 502 Bad Gateway when trying to confirm account.

Oh no! Can you send a screenshot to info@remotetogether.com ?

thx!

It's working again now!

Ok. Good!!

Great logo! Just signed up

Thanks! :)

Activation email for hi.remotetogether.com didn't come through.

Did you check your spam folder? Since we're a new org we are a little unknown by some spam filters.

If it's not in your spam folder will you email your account details to info@remotetogether.com ? That we I can diagnosis the issue better. Sorry this is happening to you!

Just looked you up via your HN username. Looks like the email went through and was delivered. Hopefully, it's in your spam folder.

Turned out to be connection issues on my end! (Gmail on Android doesn't seem to really report those)

It would be nice to use my email as my username.

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