Tropic: Remote team timezones in a simple UI

Bannerbear

Maker

🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴 Hi there product hunters! I believe remote teams are the future of work. But the benefits of this new way of working currently come along with various logistical and cultural challenges. For the last 3 years I worked in a company with teams spread across multiple global locations from Canada to the UK to Singapore. Simple things like finding time slots where participants could join a conference call were maddeningly frustrating. Cultural faux pas were frequent, due to differences in local language quirks or emotionally-contextless emails. The list of obstacles goes on and on. I believe there's scope for new types of tools to help remote teams work together better. Real-time communication has been largely solved by Slack, but that only works when your coworkers are awake at the same time as you :) In this 30-day MVP, I kept the scope quite narrow. Tropic is a simple and free tool that lets you see where your remote coworkers are in their working day (and everyone can set their own unique working hours). There's more on the way, this is just a first baby step! If you're currently working in a remote team, I'd love to hear about some of the logistical / cultural challenges you face - tweet at @yongfook 🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴🌴

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6yr ago

Stefan Kracht

Raceday.me

@yongfook Nice job. So cool to see how polished your products are after a 30 day sprint.

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6yr ago

Jon Yongfook

Bannerbear

Maker

@stefan_kracht thanks! Although, like most of my projects so far, the first 15 days were spent going in circles and then the last 15 days is when it all came together :)

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6yr ago

Arun Augustine

MFY.im

@yongfook Nice tool! Been looking for something like this even just for chatting with friends in other timezones. Would love this to be a Mac Menu bar app for easier access

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6yr ago

Okii Eli

@yongfook congratulations!!

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6yr ago

Amrith

stoic.

@yongfook You're killing it Jon! Love this 🔥 Once you're done with building 12 apps, are you gonna be probably focusing on one of those and growing that full time? Or do you have other things in mind?

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6yr ago

Marcel van Remmerden

GitLab

Looks very interesting, but another tool just came to mind when I looked at Tropic: https://timezone.io Could ou maybe give us some insight into how your product differs or what kind of functionality/ideas you are thinking about implementing?

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6yr ago

Jon Yongfook

Bannerbear

Maker

@mvremmerden Thanks for the question. I think the main difference would be that I see timezones / working hours as a feature, not the product. I'm not looking to build the world's best timezone tool - I want to build a team collaboration tool where timezones are a sensitive consideration :) The next Tropic update will be more centred around collaboration / discussion - but I'm still in the middle of brainstorming exactly how that will manifest!

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6yr ago

Marcel van Remmerden

GitLab

@yongfook Great to hear, thanks!

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6yr ago

Nikola Stojković 🇷🇸

@mvremmerden Yeah, a Buffer's tool, it's good :) They use it. Tropic looks promising ^^ Will definitely try it out.

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6yr ago

Leandro

Merida for Remote Workers

Congrats on launch number 6! I see where you're going with this, and it's looking very promising. Even if you replicate some of the features of Slack, just having it all in one place, next to other relevant tools, is valuable. It would be cool to include a group calendar for company events, vacations, and bank holidays from around the world, wherever your team is based.

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6yr ago

Tropic

Remote team timezones in a simple UI

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