Fun Yet Effective Meetings
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Fun Yet Effective Meetings
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Re: Fun Yet Effective Meetings
#2I agree with the author's crusade against pointless meetings, but their attack on email doesn't sit well with me.
> Avoid email loops. Those have too much overhead, and will divide your audience pretty quickly.
The author recommends "async slack" in a cartoon, but then advises against using email -- which is IMO far superior to "async slack" in every way possible. Mailing lists are severely under valued in corporate environments. They are still a great medium for discussion.
> Create a slack channel instead of the email loop. This will retain the whole conversation in 1 central place.
So will email? With the added benefit of being self hosted, with a great collection of software which works on any and all platforms, which has been around for decades, which can easily be archived, and which will still be accessible decades from now.
Re: Fun Yet Effective Meetings
#3I agree with the author's crusade against pointless meetings, but their attack on email doesn't sit well with me. > Avoid email loops. Those have too much overhead, and will divide your audience pretty quickly. The author recommends "async slack" in a cartoon, but then advises against using email -- which is IMO far superior to "async slack" in every way possible. Mailing lists are severely under valued in corporate…
One argument that I could imagine (not sure that I'm supporting it) to prefer slack over mail: usage patterns for a shared email channel are far more individual than for a branded async medium like slack. With mail, some people will do elaborate filtering, others just dump everything in a single inbox. Some will use mail very close to real-time (perhaps even do all their mail hands-off through some Siri/Alexa/whatever voice interface?), others might maximise asynchronicity even to the point of hardcopies. A branded channel will be far more predictable in terms of client UI and usage patterns.
Re: Fun Yet Effective Meetings
#4While I agree with much of the OP, I think it’s all over the place.
Asynchronous Communication is they key to me and is described by some remote-first companies [0].
The medium of communication is up for debate.
Co-edited design docs for example. In its simplest form I can write a draft of an ADR as markdown and add it to source control. Ensure people know it’s there and have them edit and comment in their own time. No extra tools needed.
What you do need is a team of people able and willing to spend time working like this. Some teams consist of people that are just drifting along and you’re forced to stick everybody in a room and discuss that one issue with no distractions.
Re: Fun Yet Effective Meetings
#5I agree with the author's crusade against pointless meetings, but their attack on email doesn't sit well with me. > Avoid email loops. Those have too much overhead, and will divide your audience pretty quickly. The author recommends "async slack" in a cartoon, but then advises against using email -- which is IMO far superior to "async slack" in every way possible. Mailing lists are severely under valued in corporate…
One argument that I could imagine (not sure that I'm supporting it) to prefer slack over mail: usage patterns for a shared email channel are far more individual than for a branded async medium like slack. With mail, some people will do elaborate filtering, others just dump everything in a single inbox. Some will use mail very close to real-time (perhaps even do all their mail hands-off through some Siri/Alexa/whateve…
>usage patterns for a shared email channel are far more individual than for a branded async medium like slack
on the other hand this can also be argued as a strength of email (which is what I would do) because different people need different usage patterns to work optimally, by forcing people into a one size fits all solution you will ensure some people will work less well than others.
Re: Fun Yet Effective Meetings
#6I agree with the author's crusade against pointless meetings, but their attack on email doesn't sit well with me. > Avoid email loops. Those have too much overhead, and will divide your audience pretty quickly. The author recommends "async slack" in a cartoon, but then advises against using email -- which is IMO far superior to "async slack" in every way possible. Mailing lists are severely under valued in corporate…
The problem with an email loop is it has no visibility to newcomers.
If you create a channel for a particular topic, then when someone new joins the team, you can point them to that channel to catch up.
Re: Fun Yet Effective Meetings
#7> Try as hard as possible to avoid meetings
Yes, but
> use textual IM instead
...please no, first try to figure out if you really need someone else's input at all to make a decision and after that if that input is needed immediately, if yes you should have requested that information a few days ago already. If no, send an email and don't expect an answer before the next workday. Otherwise you just interrupted someone else's work the same way a meeting would, and that should be reserved for emergencies.
Re: Fun Yet Effective Meetings
#8Can someone elaborate what the satirical part of this article is? I’m not sure I understand. Or in other words: I agree with this version very much.
Re: Fun Yet Effective Meetings
#9I agree with the author's crusade against pointless meetings, but their attack on email doesn't sit well with me. > Avoid email loops. Those have too much overhead, and will divide your audience pretty quickly. The author recommends "async slack" in a cartoon, but then advises against using email -- which is IMO far superior to "async slack" in every way possible. Mailing lists are severely under valued in corporate…
The problem with an email loop is it has no visibility to newcomers. If you create a channel for a particular topic, then when someone new joins the team, you can point them to that channel to catch up.
IIUC, Elric is referring to the usage of internal mailing lists, whose archives are (internally) open for anyone.
Each discussion becomes a URL in its own right, and is blazing fast (given it is locally hosted); you can point the thread to the newcomer. I too think this is more effective than any chat "scroll-back" hosted on someone else's infrastructure—it can go down any moment.
Re: Fun Yet Effective Meetings
#10I agree with the author's crusade against pointless meetings, but their attack on email doesn't sit well with me. > Avoid email loops. Those have too much overhead, and will divide your audience pretty quickly. The author recommends "async slack" in a cartoon, but then advises against using email -- which is IMO far superior to "async slack" in every way possible. Mailing lists are severely under valued in corporate…
The problem with an email loop is it has no visibility to newcomers. If you create a channel for a particular topic, then when someone new joins the team, you can point them to that channel to catch up.
You point newcomers at the list archive (mailman or whatever)?