@article{6688, keywords = {FLOSS}, author = {Kevin Crowston and James Howison and Chengetai Masango and Yeliz Eseryel}, title = {The role of face-to-face meetings in technology-supported self-organizing distributed teams}, abstract = {We examine the role of face-to-face meetings in the context of technology-supported self-organizing distributed or virtual teams, specifically Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development teams. Based on a qualitative inductive analysis of data from interviews and observations at FLOSS conferences, we identify a variety of settings in which developers meet face-to-face, activities performed in these settings and benefits obtained. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, FLOSS developers generally do not meet face-to-face until the project is well under way. An additional benefit of face-to-face meetings is time away from a regular job and speed of interaction for certain kinds of tasks.}, year = {2007}, journal = {IEEE Transactions on Professional Communications}, volume = {50}, number = {3}, pages = {185–203}, doi = {10.1109/TPC.2007.902654}, language = {eng}, }