Fusion’s CTO On Running A Remote Team And The Future of Journalism
Hong Qu is the CTO for Fusion. As a member of the startup team at YouTube he designed, coded and launched key features such as channels, sharing tools, homepage, and video ads. For Upworthy, he built a state of the art content management system optimized for social media and real time analytics. He specializes in helping media companies drive customer growth through design thinking.
Hong spoke with PowerToFly about designing sites for social media, how to run a distributed team and how he sees robots paving the way for the future of journalism.
How did you get your start in the tech industry?
I was in the first wave of the dot com boom in Silicon Alley back in the 1990s. I was a part of a bunch of startups that started popping up in the 90s. I started off coding in HTML.
What are some of the innovative products you are working on at Fusion?
Fusion’s parent companies want to target the millennial audience. Audience growth and development is where many media companies want to devote their attention. It’s no longer about homepages or even the article page. It’s about your build out on social media. Users are not intentionally going to our site. We are developing more ‘promiscuous media,’ where our content goes directly to our social platforms. We first set the KPIs to include reach and unique visitors but we also prioritize our followers on social media. We dedicate teams and staffs to work within social media. In a way makes it makes it easier for the tech department because we don’t have to rebuild what Facebook is doing. It’s kind of like we’re outsourcing the UI/UX because it was built for us by Facebook. We don’t have to dedicate additional staff or funds to build it out.
I am working on creating a way to evaluate and assess whether our content is doing well across social. Chartbeat and Google Analytics are industry standards, but they do not give you competitive advantage. What we did here at Fusion was add a layer of synthesis and analysis to devise actionable insights. These insights tell us how and why things are happening and how certain products are performing, so that we can do more of what works in the future.
We pull in all of the data points in real time. I work with the best UI designers to make it the data very user friendly. We jump into Slack right away when there is unusual behavior. We’re having great results because edit is training themselves. We’re engaging with super fans and gathering a lot of new information.
Tell us about your previous role at Upworthy. What was it like there working and managing a team remotely?
I was the VP of Product and UX Lead. I was one of their first hires. There were three engineers on the team. The tech for their site at that time was nothing fancy. It was a Tumblr blog. I mainly focused on the interconnection to Facebook. We tried other networks, but Facebook gave us the magnitude that we wanted as far as distribution reach. It was a small team focused on what moved the needle in a big way. I designed their page, the layout and call to action. There’s a ladder of engagement, but it’s personalized to each visitor. Personalized tech, meaning we’d ask each person to become a subscriber. If they were already a subscriber we would then ask them to like us on Facebook. Then if you shared a story, we’d ask you to share us on another social network. The point is, present the user with the best ask. Don’t just ask them once to do too many things.
I worked with a very small team of engineers. In the past there were many curators or fellows. The core team was just 10 people. It was made up of engineers, designers, edit and managers. We teleconferenced often and tried different tools and technologies for communication. We used Hipchat and Hackpad. (instead of Slack and Google Docs) We had to be super diligent, prepared, and have a set agenda with time slots for each of the agenda points. We were energetic while leading the discussion and conversation. The meeting organizer would then train the rest of the team. We were trying to establish best meeting practices and facilitation. Once the meeting was set and we had our action items, it was up to each of use to deliver on the action items.
You now run a distributed team at Fusion. How do you advocate for a distributed team in a culture that may not have had experiences with them in the past?
Upworthy had the luxury of having a small team and a blank slate. There is a higher risk at a place like Fusion because the newsroom tends to be in one place, physically. Having remote engineers, UI/UX designers and product teams took a ton of getting used to.
At Fusion I tried out Trello for product management and Slack for communication. The tech team is using Trello, but the edit team is not. We’ve been able to fly UX staffers in, to get people in the same place. Managing engineering remotely is OK because your product manager can help facilitate communication. The team is always on Slack and accessible. Our engineers are located all over the country and in international locations, like Bulgaria.
What are your top tips for managing a remote team?
- Find motivated people. The hardest thing is monitoring someone if they do not have discipline. When interviewing, we give them a test. It required them to code and write a document in 20 hours. Then we’d see how they communicate.
- Embrace the right tools. Have everyone use the same communication and project management tools — rigorously. We use Slack and Trello. Github is a simplistic setup. We have an internal team blog for deep dive discussions.
- Treat people like adults. We had consistent meetings, including bi-weekly team meetings, weekly status meetings and weekly internal blog updates. The updates are crucial. We encourage our team to strive to do less. For example, if your weekly list contains more than five major projects, then we discuss why you have so much on your plate. You are setting yourself up to do poorly on all five. Our motto is “do less,” but do each one well.
- Manage blockers. When it comes to blockers or dependencies you have to be very transparent and over communicate. You have to be realistic in setting challenges aside and pushing the product out. A project manager is the dictator on that. To-do lists pile up and blockers can cause issues.
- What I learned from Upworthy is that you don’t have to work a lot of hours, but the hours that you work have to be 100 percent focused. Often on distributed teams, we tell people that there is no minimum on the hours you work. If you find yourself spending weekends or holidays working, we don’t praise you for working harder. You need to figure out why you’re putting in so many hours when the goal is to work less and produce more. Work hours should make sense for our lives. Be super focused. Notify the team if you’re not working productively. Be transparent.
What are you most excited about in the role tech plays in the journalism world today?
There are so many cool and fun things going on. There will be robot automation in the newsroom. Robots can be used for everything from gathering story ideas to distribution and monetization. We want to let the journalist go back to what they do best — investigative reporting and telling an engaging and emotional story. They are distracted right now with having to learn ten different tech skills in the newsroom. Tech needs to catch up. Let the robots do the automation and the journalists tell the stories.
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