> Just working alone and from time to time a face2face meeting won't establish a relationship
I disagree with that. We had the first real in-person meetup about half a year after I joined the company. Up to that point, I knew everyone else pretty much only through text chat (Google Hangouts didn't exist yet).
But when I met everyone in person, it felt like we already knew each other quite well. It may not always be the case that your online and real-life personalities are aligned enough to get to know a person via chat, but in this case it definitely was.
I disagree with that. We had the first real in-person meetup about half a year after I joined the company. Up to that point, I knew everyone else pretty much only through text chat (Google Hangouts didn't exist yet).
But when I met everyone in person, it felt like we already knew each other quite well. It may not always be the case that your online and real-life personalities are aligned enough to get to know a person via chat, but in this case it definitely was.