In the main article Slack communication is assumed to be synchronous.
I find life to be a little happier when it's assumed to be asynchronous.
That means turning off some channel notifications.
When I really want effective synchronous communication I tend to escalate from Slack to audio or video a screen share -- it seems like there's an extra layer of collaboration that you can have with a bit higher bandwidth.
For meetings I like to have audio plus a screen share of a shared document -- usually not a Slack document, because it's valuable to have more than one person be able to make edits.
E-mail is inherently async. Async to the core. Why not just send your async requests as an e-mail so the other person can handle it as they process their inbox?
Slack excels at real-time, interactive communication. It's chat, designed for back-and-forth. Your messages will get scrolled into the backlog if there's a lot of chat while you're away.
The green dot (or the "busy" setting) is great for understanding whether the other person is going to receive your message as a notification at their computer or a push message on their phone. That's highly relevant.
> Email doesn't have an easy way to add someone to a thread
You add them to the cc list.
> or to manage a forked conversation.
Your email client is at fault there, any decent email manages forked conversations.
> It's closed and non-discoverable by default.
Thats why you have mailing lists which are indexed and searchable. You may see 'closed and non discoverable' as a downside, I do not. Anything that should be discoverable should be on a wiki.
Yes, in this case you explicitly introduce the reader with context, which is important when you have specific information that may be considered sensitive, or history that is not relevant.
Anyone reading the "to" line can see where the reader was introduced.
I find workplaces that default to closed conversations, and require explicit reading in of new participants, to be poor places to work. It feels like people use connections, being involved in key discussions, and their ability to connect people, as social currency. This is good for them, bad for the rest of the organisation.
I find it great, it saves me from information overload. For 'project' things, these often start on a mailing list and I can go back/search a mailing list if its that important.
I'll be honest to say, most things that is said in any communication medium is a complete waste of time. Having i searchable rather than forcing it on people globally is the only scalable option.
I think most of us are lucky enough to work in companies or roles where that’s an acceptable option, but many others are not. It’s gotta be a cultural company change or one driven by the product team at Slack.
I have all notifications off all the time. I check slack when I have a moment, like if I'm waiting for CI or a long compile. Actual highlights will turn the tray icon red, so I will notice soon, but replying even to highlights immediately is madness.
Is there a way to have this async communication presented in a better way?
I am on Discord, Telegram, and Slack sometimes with thousands of members.
Yet, I mostly don't read posts anymore because it's just a full marketplace talking and finding that needle in a haystack of good information is impossible.
So unless I am in sync I can't read.
When I really want effective synchronous communication I tend to escalate from Slack to audio or video a screen share -- it seems like there's an extra layer of collaboration that you can have with a bit higher bandwidth.
For meetings I like to have audio plus a screen share of a shared document -- usually not a Slack document, because it's valuable to have more than one person be able to make edits.