My entire job is focused on communication and visibility, and the answer of MORE COMMUNICATION is pretty simplistic. I think teams would be better to focus on the areas of (1) identifying the correct audience, (2) sharing the right information at the right level of abstraction and (3) using the appropriate tool or communication channel. None of this likely involves adding me to your channel or meeting.
Why public chats are better than direct messages
51–60 of 139 posts
Re: Why public chats are better than direct messages
#52this is fine but my guess is their company is not big enough yet. the Apple example is not very convincing.
Re: Why public chats are better than direct messages
#53As I read this, I got the sinking feeling that I'd read it all before. But then I realised, it's just another case of someone thinking that their specific solution is best, solely on the basis that it worked for them, in their specific circumstances. But here's the thing: every group is different, has different needs, and will respond differently to different styles of communication. Some people (especially people no…
If you're stressed by typing in your team chat you don't trust your team and therefore there's a deeper issue already. I strongly believe you are wrong because all the examples you mention signal different team disfunctions. You need to understand everyone is different, yes, but your team should use public channels to communicate.
Re: Why public chats are better than direct messages
#54We go further. We encourage most conversations to happen on our public forum and our youtube show. Documentation and architectural, economic and legal discussion is in the open too. Everyone is encouraged to prepare their thoughts privately, so they do not embarrass themselves publicly, but the cross-pollination of ideas is crucial.
The result is here:
https://community.intercoin.org
https://youtube.com/c/intercoin
Anyone coming by is able to see what we are working on. We’re gradually moving to self-hosting everything open source, with no reliance on Big Tech at all. We do want to rely increasingly on decentralized networks, though.
Even our clients are encouraged to come on the show to discuss their challenges and their needs, rather than “requirements gathering” in private. They sign a release that we can use clips in our marketing. We explain to them that they get exposure for their community and fundraising, as the clips get shared in the subsequent months. A few clients insist on an NDA - we put them on a waitlist at the back of the line. We prioritize clients who are willing to openly discuss their community and needs. As a result, we also have an endless supply of “reality TV” case studies from beginning to end of testimonials about how they needed our service, and then how we helped them.
By creating a culture of openness and collaboration, we make sure people know what is happening. Our roadmap is public. Our customers are public. I personally interviewed some well known people this past year:
Noam Chomsky, political commentator
Sara Hanks, author of Regulation S at SEC
Ian Clarke, founder of Freenet, the first truly decentralized hosting network
Thomas Greco, community currency economist
And much more. Now in the show’s second season, I plan to organize panels where we have multiple well-known people and have them discuss stuff for 1-2 hours. Sometimes we may use a famous person as a reason to reach out to other famous people to be on the same show.
I used to wonder why I accomplish so much and yet get so little interest. It’s because you have to be public with your successes and grow a snowball around your project, to attract people with clout, reach, resources, and other forms of capital. To build a movement, it’s better to have every member to bring 1 new person a week, than spend $ on marketing on FAMGA in a zero-sum game to strangers. Virality wins in the end, and us far more sustainable.
The goal is about more cross pollination of ideas. We don’t have a big audience (yet). But we will be selling this software and this system, to celebrities, conferences and other projects - including tech startups. If you’re interested, comment below.
Re: Why public chats are better than direct messages
#55As I read this, I got the sinking feeling that I'd read it all before. But then I realised, it's just another case of someone thinking that their specific solution is best, solely on the basis that it worked for them, in their specific circumstances. But here's the thing: every group is different, has different needs, and will respond differently to different styles of communication. Some people (especially people no…
> Some people (especially people not using their first language) can find working in public stressful
Which is fine coming in, but the culture should be one that reassures these folks that public forums in the company are safe regardless of their proficiency with the main language.
Half of the people I work with speak English as a 2nd language (most are very proficient since they're mostly French-Canadian but there are plenty that make a bunch of grammar/spelling mistakes). That's never been the reason why folks try to use private channels to discuss work. The main reason I've seen is because people think it's more efficient to reach out directly to people. I've seen it a bunch with product managers and engineering managers that are new to the company and not used to a culture of trying to work out in the open.
Re: Why public chats are better than direct messages
#56This is why, when a colleague has a question about a pull request, or my feedback on THEIR pull request, I push us to have the discussion in the PR comments, instead of the pernicious "I just have a few questions, it will only take a few minutes" that always adds up to more time and attention than people claim. There ARE often situations where opening a synchronous communication channel is necessary, but even then, y…
Honestly, that does sound difficult. I get what you're trying to achieve, but if I'm trying to land a change, having a synchronous conversation (ideally in person) will resolve any misunderstandings between us on the order of minutes. Having an asynchronous back-and-forth takes on the order of hours or even days. And what do you get for your time? A nice record you can look back on? What are you going to use that for…
I'm happy that you haven't made the opposite experience.
> if I'm trying to land a change, having a synchronous conversation (ideally in person) will resolve any misunderstandings between us on the order of minutes.
That does not match with my experience.
Imagine I wrote a comment on Steve's PR in foo.py line 31 that said "I see what you are doing here. Do you think this would be more readable if you used the itertools from the standard library instead of implementing this yourself?".
Now Steve asks me if he can have a call with me about my comments. I join the call and he opens the PR. He reads my comment aloud, then he says "OK" and opens up the documentation for itertools and reads it silently. I'm still in the call.
This goes on for every comment.
I see what you mean and wish that that was how it worked - and I've made good experiences doing this after 90% of comments in the "written comments" stage are worked on by the author. But just skipping it sounds like insanity to me.
Re: Why public chats are better than direct messages
#57As I read this, I got the sinking feeling that I'd read it all before. But then I realised, it's just another case of someone thinking that their specific solution is best, solely on the basis that it worked for them, in their specific circumstances. But here's the thing: every group is different, has different needs, and will respond differently to different styles of communication. Some people (especially people no…
If you're stressed by typing in your team chat you don't trust your team and therefore there's a deeper issue already. I strongly believe you are wrong because all the examples you mention signal different team disfunctions. You need to understand everyone is different, yes, but your team should use public channels to communicate.
You strongly believe that I am wrong that there is no one single way?
So, you are saying that yours is the only way? And that being flexible and working out what’s right for your team… is wrong?
Re: Why public chats are better than direct messages
#58As I read this, I got the sinking feeling that I'd read it all before. But then I realised, it's just another case of someone thinking that their specific solution is best, solely on the basis that it worked for them, in their specific circumstances. But here's the thing: every group is different, has different needs, and will respond differently to different styles of communication. Some people (especially people no…
Yes, but so is which is best for which situation still the question? Presuming that information asymmetry will hold over time is a bad assumption, regardless of cost of information security controls. Why have these new collaborative innovative services succeeded where NNTP and > > indented, text-wrapped email forwards for new onboards have not? Instead of Chat or IM, hopefully working on Issues with checkbox Tasks an…
> Why have these new collaborative innovative services succeeded where NNTP and > > indented, text-wrapped email forwards for new onboards have not?
The new tools we have at our disposal are amazing. Of course they are better. But they are just tools. They don’t solve any problems relating to interpersonal communication any more than a hammer solves building a house.
> What style of communication is appropriate for a team in which phase of development, regardless of communications channel?
It’s the job of a manager to work that out. There is no formula. It’s not even possible to write one down. That’s the point.
Re: Why public chats are better than direct messages
#59As I read this, I got the sinking feeling that I'd read it all before. But then I realised, it's just another case of someone thinking that their specific solution is best, solely on the basis that it worked for them, in their specific circumstances. But here's the thing: every group is different, has different needs, and will respond differently to different styles of communication. Some people (especially people no…
> Some people (especially people not using their first language) can find working in public stressful Which is fine coming in, but the culture should be one that reassures these folks that public forums in the company are safe regardless of their proficiency with the main language. Half of the people I work with speak English as a 2nd language (most are very proficient since they're mostly French-Canadian but there a…
If people find a particular way of working stressful then it doesn’t matter what causes the stress. It was just an example. Some people are on the ASD spectrum, some are extroverts, some introverts. Some might have other difficulties, big problems at home.
But there is room in the world for more than one way of doing work. There are drawbacks to doing everything in public just as there are drawbacks to doing everything in private. If you care about getting the most out of the individuals in your team then finding the right balance is hard, and there is no one solution that will work in all cases.
Re: Why public chats are better than direct messages
#60As I read this, I got the sinking feeling that I'd read it all before. But then I realised, it's just another case of someone thinking that their specific solution is best, solely on the basis that it worked for them, in their specific circumstances. But here's the thing: every group is different, has different needs, and will respond differently to different styles of communication. Some people (especially people no…
I’m just going to add that it looks like this is some kind of Slack hasslebot dystopia. They want all conversations in public so they can data mine them?
From the home page,
> Teamplify | Hey @anna.austin, we haven't seen updates for PROJ-716 since Thursday, July 19. Could you please add a comment there summarizing your progress as of today.