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Thank you for this! Really helped others out Would you say there is not enough clear messaging to articulate that this is for you and just your core people and

Thank you for this! Really helped others out Would you say there is not enough clear messaging to articulate that this is for you and just your core people and not everyone in the company? That Slack and everything serves a purpose but you and your core team needs to be on the same page. Or would that still decrease productivity in your opinion.

fishtoaster 4y ago
I think the message "this is just for your core team" comes across pretty loud and clear. What took me a while to figure out is "what the heck even is this?" Maybe "Walkie-talkie for developers" is more evocative to other people, but I'd never heard of "Walkie-talkie" in the context of software. It took quite a while to see what this product actually does ("always-on voice chat with opt-in channels"). As for productivity, I don't think the size of the group changes the fundamental problem. For a lot of people, having the possibility of a coworker popping in and disrupting your concentration would be super annoying, even if it is only your immediate team. That's why, in open offices, people often wear big headphones to signal "don't talk to me unless it's important, I'm focusing right now." That's why I think this would be super useful in cases where I'm willing to sacrifice focus for high-bandwidth communication. For example, during a company hackathon where I'm working with a small team and we're all batting around ideas super quickly. Or during an outage where the team trying to fix things needs to communicate fast. But for day-to-day work, even with my immediate team, I'd much rather rely on asynchronous and written communication that won't interrupt what I'm working on.
- talksik 4y ago
  Thanks for this! That makes sense, we need to try different messaging to hit it on the nail, but "walkie-talkie" seems to click as a decent initial introduction. I totally agree. When I'm in flow state, I don't want anything to disturb me. Hence, I need a power switch, which is the power button in the widget. I'm a minimalist myself and having an off switch has been awesome for me, as compared to all of the configuration I have to do with Slack notifications to have it do what I want. Thoughts on this?

fishtoaster 4y ago

I think the message "this is just for your core team" comes across pretty loud and clear. What took me a while to figure out is "what the heck even is this?" Maybe "Walkie-talkie for developers" is more evocative to other people, but I'd never heard of "Walkie-talkie" in the context of software. It took quite a while to see what this product actually does ("always-on voice chat with opt-in channels"). As for productivity, I don't think the size of the group changes the fundamental problem. For a lot of people, having the possibility of a coworker popping in and disrupting your concentration would be super annoying, even if it is only your immediate team. That's why, in open offices, people often wear big headphones to signal "don't talk to me unless it's important, I'm focusing right now." That's why I think this would be super useful in cases where I'm willing to sacrifice focus for high-bandwidth communication. For example, during a company hackathon where I'm working with a small team and we're all batting around ideas super quickly. Or during an outage where the team trying to fix things needs to communicate fast. But for day-to-day work, even with my immediate team, I'd much rather rely on asynchronous and written communication that won't interrupt what I'm working on.

talksik 4y ago
Thanks for this! That makes sense, we need to try different messaging to hit it on the nail, but "walkie-talkie" seems to click as a decent initial introduction. I totally agree. When I'm in flow state, I don't want anything to disturb me. Hence, I need a power switch, which is the power button in the widget. I'm a minimalist myself and having an off switch has been awesome for me, as compared to all of the configuration I have to do with Slack notifications to have it do what I want. Thoughts on this?