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Anyone happen to have any advice on convincing the rest of your distributed team to use a chat room? Our team lead has an odd aversion to using IM, which exten

Anyone happen to have any advice on convincing the rest of your distributed team to use a chat room? Our team lead has an odd aversion to using IM, which extends to distrust of any electronic messaging beyond email. However I really feel a persistent chat room would be a big help for the team.

praptak 15y ago
Skunkwork it. After all you are not forbidden to communicate with other team members using tools of your choice? If you are, then I have no advice for you.
- untog 15y ago
  I would imagine that a lot of communication needs to be with the team lead- so his lack of participation would make it pretty useless.
jessed 15y ago
I actually prefer a chat room over email. It's logged, with group discussion and it's asynchronous. I don't have to begin a reply and then wait for a response. I just get it out in the room and keep going. Another thing I like about using a room is the chance to use Hubot (http://hubot.github.com/ http://hubot.github.com/). It makes for some fun and can also be extended to actually do useful stuff. If your team as an aversion to IM try to entice them with a room is better because it's not one to one and everyone can see and answer questions and it facilitates group discussion easily and it's asynchronous so it gets out of your way.
- erikcw 15y ago
  We've been using skype chat almost elusively for 3 years. At first, I loved the work flow, but in our case it has devolved into an email replacement for one of our team leads. He daily sends reams of chat messages into the room with the expectation of a synchronous response. Messages routinely get lost in the shuffle. I'm working to get him to use email for these sorts of issues -- status, in progress. If skype had threaded chat conversations, it would be much more manageable. Until then, I miss gmail... :) Use the right tool for the job.
  - technomancy 15y ago
    Skype has a pretty awful UI for chats. If you get people set up using a bouncer then it's pretty easy to get persistent conversations over IRC, and then people get to use the client of their choice. Plus it's a lot easier to automate with bots.
ardit33 15y ago
User Yammer. It will work well for you. Think it as replacement for both email and chat.
JoeAltmaier 15y ago
Consider Sococo Teamspace (I work for Sococo). I use it daily, it has voice, chat, doc sharing, video. Its always-on, has a small download footprint.

praptak 15y ago

Skunkwork it. After all you are not forbidden to communicate with other team members using tools of your choice? If you are, then I have no advice for you.

untog 15y ago
I would imagine that a lot of communication needs to be with the team lead- so his lack of participation would make it pretty useless.

jessed 15y ago

I actually prefer a chat room over email. It's logged, with group discussion and it's asynchronous. I don't have to begin a reply and then wait for a response. I just get it out in the room and keep going. Another thing I like about using a room is the chance to use Hubot (http://hubot.github.com/ http://hubot.github.com/). It makes for some fun and can also be extended to actually do useful stuff. If your team as an aversion to IM try to entice them with a room is better because it's not one to one and everyone can see and answer questions and it facilitates group discussion easily and it's asynchronous so it gets out of your way.

erikcw 15y ago
We've been using skype chat almost elusively for 3 years. At first, I loved the work flow, but in our case it has devolved into an email replacement for one of our team leads. He daily sends reams of chat messages into the room with the expectation of a synchronous response. Messages routinely get lost in the shuffle. I'm working to get him to use email for these sorts of issues -- status, in progress. If skype had threaded chat conversations, it would be much more manageable. Until then, I miss gmail... :) Use the right tool for the job.
- technomancy 15y ago
  Skype has a pretty awful UI for chats. If you get people set up using a bouncer then it's pretty easy to get persistent conversations over IRC, and then people get to use the client of their choice. Plus it's a lot easier to automate with bots.

ardit33 15y ago

User Yammer. It will work well for you. Think it as replacement for both email and chat.

JoeAltmaier 15y ago

Consider Sococo Teamspace (I work for Sococo). I use it daily, it has voice, chat, doc sharing, video. Its always-on, has a small download footprint.