Comment by karmakaze | Hacker News Reader

Comment by karmakaze | Hacker News Reader

> Slack Alternatives

> 2. Slack clone but with Feature X. Feature X is usually something like task management, project management, notes etc. Examples of these apps are Chanty, Rock.so, Flock, Ryver, Twist (there are many more).

> The problem with the apps in the second category is that they end up competing with two existing tools.

I use 4 written communication tools:

1. Slack for (a) async & sync team chat (b) async company/other-teams channels

2. Email for formal company communication (I don't send email, other than auto calendar invites)

3. git/GitHub for project work

4. Google Docs for RFCs

In addition there are sync meets and pairing sessions.

The only thing that I find missing is a good shared whiteboard and hallway/watercooler chats.

The problem with Slack exists between chair and keyboard--it's about finding a way to use it that works. If the culture is for anyone to post arbitrary volume in a large channel, then that's on you. Similarly if your company/teams create too many channels that many people should be in, you're doing it wrong. My policy is that if there's more than X people in a channel I don't need to pay attention (except for the 1 official company announcements channel).

In 2016, I was hoping slack or a competitor would take a native desktop application, but ultimately found slack's problem's managable.

It's a shame that instead of literally any progress or competition at all, the industry is regressing rapidly into the slower, buggier, and in every way I can think of, just all around inferior product called "teams".

I'm always curious about how different teams have "solved" whiteboarding with distributed teams, as they are normally then not whiteboarding but using a collaborative diagramming tool which is much too restrictive.

The closest I've found is making sure everyone has a decent sized tablet and using Google Jam.

Miro works well for this, you don't need to use it as a diagramming tool.

AWW was awesome at this, free-form drawing was the default, you'd just doodle whatever you wanted, no structure required.

I disagree about Miro, it is definitely a diagramming tool.

Jam is shared Paintbrush, so everyone sketches like a whiteboard which sounds like the AWW you mention.

Slack _is_ missing some basic functionality for keeping yourself organized when receiving a bunch of info, it's not just about the people. Especially when it's the replacement for corporate e-mail.

Dumb example: you are in N threads. You want to remove yourself from those threads. You can turn off being notified from them one-by-one (refreshing the page to actually have them disappear). Compare with e-mail, where you can quickly select a bunch of threads and just hit "archive".

For the whiteboarding solution at work we use Miro. Extremely happy with it

I've also used Miro. It's good for gathering information, but not so good for synthesizing/creating/collaborating on a design diagram that you can do with a whiteboard and marker. Maybe it can work better with a large tablet device--I haven't tried.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com