The world has moved on
In the days of cubicles, meeting rooms and fixed office then most shared communication occurred at during meetings. Yuk, we have major issues with “meetings” because:
- They require folks to be physically in the same place at the same time. That requires coordination, travelling and planning
- Not everyone contributes to the whole meeting, resulting in wasted time, attention-span and morale
- Costs can be astronomical. Multiply the length of the meeting by the number of attendees and you’ll see what we mean. Never mind the cost of providing the meeting space to begin with – a space that often sites empty for 75% of the week.
- They last too long. Always.
At the turn of the century we started creating alternative “meeting” environments. Initially we bastardised a lump of forum software to provide persistent collaboration areas. Thankfully, today there are lots of good solutions available off the shelf – and I don’t mean email.
How we collaborate
We operate using a number of collaboration platforms for all communication, internal and external:
- Slack: Either native on our own platform or, increasingly using shared Slack channels that bridge across multiple workspaces to encompass clients and suppliers.
- Zendesk: to managed the thousands of support requests we process every year. It’s simple, clear and everyone just “gets it”. Our helpdesk runs Zendesk.
- Basecamp: to manage larger projects and more formal project flows, usually with a nominated Project Manager.
As that’s largely it. We do support other platforms such as Trello, Jira, Skype, email (if we have to) and phone (occasionally). But if you are getting the best from working with us you will likely use Slack, Zendesk and Basecamp.
