Unslack: Transform the way your business communicates (again)
unslack.co
unslack.co
So, for my team (after trying quite a few options, with Slack being a no-go), I went for Basecamp. To a large extend, it is email-like, with chat and to-do lists as features (so can be used when needed), not - the core.
However - do you know some BC-like tools for community building (edu/gaming)? Discord is considered the go-to solution, but it lacks "posts" for more focused content.
As for your question, my first thought was Discourse. It's a modern day forum. Posts, threads, the whole shebang. Has badges and leaderboards too.
I've heard good things about Twist as well. Though I haven't used it yet.
At the same time I love endless chats (within proper channels). They don’t distract me from my work. I don’t participate when I need to focus and other than that, well the communication is also my work, just as important as writing code.
As to your community question, how about a subreddit?
I can't imagine using the website without it. Sadly, it's not available on Safari.
It seems like Slack is massively overvalued.
At my current organization which has a small team of around ~10 people, we simply could no longer justify the astronomical per-seat price tag, the needlessly convoluted admin UI, among a host of other trivial/annoying things like the syntax restriction on channel naming, and the constant whack-a-mole of maintaining user permissions/roles so that someone wouldn’t install some cheeky chat bot that asks everyone what they want for lunch.
Im not naive enough to think that Slack isn’t aimed squarely at enterprise whale clients, but with the emergence of other workplace chat platforms like the ones built into GSuite and O365, and the ease of which you can spin up something open source like Rocket Chat or Discourse (IIRC Discourse has a self-hosted option), I really have a hard time understanding why this tech is so appealing.
Pepper in Slack’s un-impressive growth during COVID-19, it seems pretty clear that the other shoe might drop—and even a death knell acquisition from Salesforce might start looking appealing.
Someone smarter than me: what am I missing?
designers are the exception
This joke looks unprofessional and inappropriate to me. I’m not sure why it’s on the landing page, especially when the product is about communication in a business context.
Edit: ah, it’s a joke product.
Yes but not in a business context. Quote from a random law firm:
“Sexual jokes are not merely inappropriate in the workplace — they can constitute sexual harassment.”
Source: https://www.thearmstronglawfirm.com/sexual-harassment/sexual...
If this were a real product and not a joke, the marketing team would suggest putting sex jokes on the homepage, and probably debate which sex joke would get the the most laughs, and why.
They might even end up doing surveys to find out if our sex jokes are too raunchy, or just right.
If I worked there, and had to listen to a bunch of guys laughing about sex jokes all day, I'd probably feel awkward and left out---even if none of those jokes were directed at me, and only were said in the context of making customers laugh.
Disclaimer: I have worked at companies that sold sex toys, and no one made any sex jokes at work, or in our marketing material.
I can't agree with what you say. I think it's that kind of humour that can only harm who uses it, so it's a bit prudish for others to get offended.
If the product weren't a joke, I would have let the market decide if the joke in the home page deserved indignation or not.
I disagree here. For various reasons [1] I feel that inappropriate humor shouldn’t be used in public workplace channels. Because of that it feels a bit weird for me to send or receive a link to a product that includes a sexual innuendo on its landing page.
[1] At the risk of stating the obvious: If the majority of the team or if a person in a position of power starts making inappropriate jokes (here: sexual innuendos), then people in the minority or people with less power may feel uncomfortable and it may be difficult for them to stop this kind of thing.
Part of me was hoping this was actually implemented though rather than just a silly concept with a catchy landing page. Maybe a hack in the spirit of DIWhy. Just last year, me and my friends got into a discussion about the power of spreadsheets. There was a time when I'd think "I could write an app for that. A weekend of Python, two for Android...". Now I think first if I could do it in Google Sheets.
Sheets is honestly damn powerful as a dev platform, especially now that it could do SQL-ish queries. It has native access to some nifty Google APIs too. Imagine your database, your backend, and your UI grid powered by the same SDK! My church's shared SchedReservation-2010-NEW.xls that was actually a remake of a file dating back to 2007, accidentally deleted when they upgraded to XP, would be So. Much. Better.
I see what you did there.
My first "wait..." moment was when they said it was built on Google Sheets. But to be honest it wasn't confirmed that it was a joke for me until I saw the Blockbuster endorsement.