Maybe this is the sign I’ve been waiting for

Every Friday, venture capitalist Fred Wilson features a recent Kickstarter project that he just contributed towards.

Today’s featured project was Remotely, remote meeting cards that provide meeting goers and leaders with the tools to communicate effectively, connect with others, and have fun.

Here’s the video showing Remotely in action:

Here’s the story behind Remotely, from its creator Jess Malz:

The concept for these cards came at the beginning of the coronacoaster. Up until COVID-19, I did mainly in person sessions. Because of the pandemic, I began leading online sessions and found a lot of new challenges when my tried and true facilitation hacks and interventions weren’t working. I started by drawing cards to visually communicate instructions like “please wrap up” and much to my surprise it worked! People responded rapidly and everyone said “hey, where did you get those, we need that”. The rest is history!

There are a variety of card decks to choose from. The basic deck enables you to easily hold a card up to your webcam during a remote meeting to communicate all kinds of things. Need to step away for a moment? Can’t hear who’s speaking? Want to send a ghost hug to a co-worker? Remote Meeting Cards have got you covered with a fun, disruption-free way of communicating in the moment.

The Outspoken deck is for rebels that want to share what you’re really thinking or feeling during remote meetings. Simply pick a card that gets to the heart of the matter of what you want to communicate.

The Energized deck is a great way to keep your team or participants engaged, high spirited and to have some fun while also being productive. These cards are great to introduce new team members, get to know colleagues better, help make people feel comfortable, keep participants focused, strengthen team dynamic and boost creative thinking.

Watching this video reminded me of a somewhat similar idea I had several years ago. I wanted to create a deck of cards that I was going to call Road Signs. The deck of cards would be kept in your car and used to communicate with other drivers on the road.

Here were some of my initial ideas for the Road Signs:

• Your brake lights are out.
• Your turn signal is not working.
• Nice car!
• Slow down!
• What’s your phone number?
• My number is 215–867–5309
• You’ve got a flat tire.

Reading about the Outspoken deck above gave me the idea that you could come up with some more aggressive road signs, but of course such signs could have unintended consequences.

Remotely has already nearly doubled its fundraising goal and it still has 12 days to go.

So the time may be ripe to release Road Signs.

Just remember that you first heard about them here, at Bordens Blather.