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I was going to make the same point. If there was a (preferably web based) chat / call / video conference app that allows me to connect to all of those services

I was going to make the same point. If there was a (preferably web based) chat / call / video conference app that allows me to connect to all of those services and never have to keep context switching, it would be a big improvement. Maybe there is one and I just don't know about it? As far as issue tracking, unfortunately I think the functionality and workflow differs too much between products for there to be one UI to rule them all. There is actually one collaboration tool that has been able to work somewhat well (not without cons) across all UI implementations: email. That might be something to think about.

programjoe 9y ago
That's really helpful to know, I had been considering building software geared towards lean / iterative and auto generated documentation as my initial approach into collaboration tools but I will definitely have to start expanding my research
- PaulHoule 9y ago
  Joe, send an email to paul.houle@ontology2.com. I am working on a tool which is oriented towards auto generated documentation in the large. It is not "consumer oriented" but more like "Project Xanadu for nerds", so you might find components of it useful.
BjoernKW 9y ago
This comic strip about competing standards is quite relevant here, too: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ I don't think that a tool unifying all these apps is desirable nor even possible right now (because most of the protocols used are closed anyway): You'd either end up with an atrocity that tries to accommodate each feature of each of these apps or you'd have to settle for the lowest common denominator, which probably is just video, screensharing and chat. The latter might not be the worst outcome. In fact, an app that does just that could provide a superior user experience. This begs the question though why this isn't possible with existing solutions already. Why do collaboration tool providers seem to be motivated to make their products ever more complicated or sometimes even worse than the previous version? Feature creep is a part of that problem but often collaboration tools are only seen as a small component of a more comprehensive ecosystem, as exemplified by the Skype / Skype for Business / Lync trainwreck. Skype was (and still is for the most part) an at least adequate solution. Then Microsoft bought them, intentionally made the product worse in some respects while rebranding their less-than-adequate solution Lync as Skype for Business in order to push their other enterprise products. Why is there - as you rightly said - no common standard like email that works across all UI implementations? I think the answer to that question predominantly lies with the fact that we still have too little remote collaboration, particularly in-between organisations. As soon as remote collaboration becomes more widespread - which it inevitably will - the default even rather than the outlier we'll sooner or later have to agree on common standards just as we had to with technologies like the phone or electric power distribution.
- programjoe 9y ago
  What would you classify as remote collaboration? When organizations are more geographically distributed, a rise in work from home / anywhere, or something else. Just trying to better understand your point of view
  - BjoernKW 9y ago
    Well, both actually. Organizations will have to decentralise in order to continue to be able to compete, grow and scale. Larger organisations, which for the most part already are distributed, will have to become even more distributed to keep up. The big differentiator in my opinion however will be the individual's ability to work from anywhere. Not only do companies around the world spend ridiculous amounts of money on keeping everyone in the same office, there to pretend to be 'working', but nobody also seems to be willing to actually talk about the elephant in the room when it comes to environmental issues and keeping our cities from collapsing: Commuting. Doing away with the need to commute could be a large contributing factor to fighting global warming. Yet we as a society are mostly ignoring this while at the same time seriously talking about abusing automated driving to allow people to commute even more.
amedvednikov 9y ago
That's why I developed a lightweight native client for Slack, Skype and others: https://eul.im https://eul.im It's only 4 MB and handles tens of thousands of Slack messages in one chat without lag.

programjoe 9y ago

That's really helpful to know, I had been considering building software geared towards lean / iterative and auto generated documentation as my initial approach into collaboration tools but I will definitely have to start expanding my research

PaulHoule 9y ago
Joe, send an email to paul.houle@ontology2.com. I am working on a tool which is oriented towards auto generated documentation in the large. It is not "consumer oriented" but more like "Project Xanadu for nerds", so you might find components of it useful.

BjoernKW 9y ago

This comic strip about competing standards is quite relevant here, too: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ I don't think that a tool unifying all these apps is desirable nor even possible right now (because most of the protocols used are closed anyway): You'd either end up with an atrocity that tries to accommodate each feature of each of these apps or you'd have to settle for the lowest common denominator, which probably is just video, screensharing and chat. The latter might not be the worst outcome. In fact, an app that does just that could provide a superior user experience. This begs the question though why this isn't possible with existing solutions already. Why do collaboration tool providers seem to be motivated to make their products ever more complicated or sometimes even worse than the previous version? Feature creep is a part of that problem but often collaboration tools are only seen as a small component of a more comprehensive ecosystem, as exemplified by the Skype / Skype for Business / Lync trainwreck. Skype was (and still is for the most part) an at least adequate solution. Then Microsoft bought them, intentionally made the product worse in some respects while rebranding their less-than-adequate solution Lync as Skype for Business in order to push their other enterprise products. Why is there - as you rightly said - no common standard like email that works across all UI implementations? I think the answer to that question predominantly lies with the fact that we still have too little remote collaboration, particularly in-between organisations. As soon as remote collaboration becomes more widespread - which it inevitably will - the default even rather than the outlier we'll sooner or later have to agree on common standards just as we had to with technologies like the phone or electric power distribution.

programjoe 9y ago
What would you classify as remote collaboration? When organizations are more geographically distributed, a rise in work from home / anywhere, or something else. Just trying to better understand your point of view
- BjoernKW 9y ago
  Well, both actually. Organizations will have to decentralise in order to continue to be able to compete, grow and scale. Larger organisations, which for the most part already are distributed, will have to become even more distributed to keep up. The big differentiator in my opinion however will be the individual's ability to work from anywhere. Not only do companies around the world spend ridiculous amounts of money on keeping everyone in the same office, there to pretend to be 'working', but nobody also seems to be willing to actually talk about the elephant in the room when it comes to environmental issues and keeping our cities from collapsing: Commuting. Doing away with the need to commute could be a large contributing factor to fighting global warming. Yet we as a society are mostly ignoring this while at the same time seriously talking about abusing automated driving to allow people to commute even more.

amedvednikov 9y ago

That's why I developed a lightweight native client for Slack, Skype and others: https://eul.im https://eul.im It's only 4 MB and handles tens of thousands of Slack messages in one chat without lag.