Hello, Chris, indeed perhaps something can be shown at the Marrakech TTF session on Monday. :-) Re: Skype, Skype calls aren't typically used for group calls but are often used for At-Large members to voice chat one on one. As a FYI, the Skype Translation features now built in for one on one chat and video calls are a huge plus. Had a conversation with a LACRALO colleague in Latin America and the Skype translation worked well between English and Spanish, in spite of the bandwidth challenges. I suspect Slack voice and video chat would not have this feature. There is a Slack integration to translate Slack messages https://github.com/roman01la/slack-traductor Dev Anand On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 2:45 PM, Chris Gift <chris.gift@icann.org> wrote:
Dev
For the use cases you list Slack is far better. So if you guys are using chat a lot then we should definitely trial Slack — but do you used Skype calls for your group chats as well or only texting? If it’s the former we may have to wait for Slack to add voice/video.
I’m more than happy to show everyone how ICANN IT and Product Management staff use Slack for our collaboration.
Chris Gift
ICANN M +31.06.2787.6232 Twitter @cgift
On 3/2/16, 19:35, "Dev Anand Teelucksingh" <devtee@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks Chris. I think the TTF would like to trial discourse.org . I've heard about it before but no direct experience and I see that its feature set is growing after its 3 years of existence.
Re: Slack, At-Large uses Skype group chats a LOT. The disadvantages of Skype are that - Skype group chats aren't discoverable outside of those in the Skype group chat (similiar to Slack) - although, Skype now allows persons to join a Skype chat without needing a Skype client. - messages aren't saved. If you switch to a new desktop or mobile device, you lose access to all of your past conversations and chats over the years and the loss of knowledge and history is significant. Slack having a centralised (and searchable!) archive of past messages is much better in that regard. - you can't search across all Skype chats, if you recall there was a URL you posted to someone last year, you have to remember in which Skype chat you saw the URL. And if you've switched to a new Skype logged in account , you've lost access to those conversations.
So from those perspectives, using Slack for group chat to replace Skype seems better. It is indeed a challenge to get buyin of any new approach or technology.
Dev Anand
On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 11:15 AM, Chris Gift <chris.gift@icann.org> wrote:
Slack remains my favorite team collaboration and communications tool it’s fantastic at many things. But I remain skeptical on its applicability to the multistakeholder model for a few reasons.
First, it’s a synchronous communication model and the community, due to timezones, work schedules, etc., work asynchronously. Second, as most synchronous models, the medium is conducive to short messages, sometimes with attachments and/or links. It’s not good at lengthy, thoughtful discussions. And third, is that it’s not open and transparent. I really have no idea how we could let people inspect the discussions happening within Slack. And as for archiving offline somewhere, again, I have no idea how that would work. Note that they have a robust API we could work with to resolve some of these issues.
Having said all the above, it is a tool we should continue to keep an eye, and perhaps even experiment with once they get voice and video.
Of all the tools I’ve looked at over the past few years, the one I remain convinced is a good fit for the ICANN community is discourse.org. It’s a modern replacement for the forum with many features that overlap with listservs. I tried deploying this twice, once with 1Net — remember that??? :) — and once with one of the IANA transition groups. Both times community members resisted and asked us to revert to a standard listerv. Which we of course did.
Chris Gift ICANN M +31.06.2787.6232 Twitter @cgift
On 3/1/16, 23:43, "ttf-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org on behalf of Dev Anand Teelucksingh" <ttf-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org on behalf of devtee@gmail.com> wrote:
Via www.techcrunch.com/2016/03/01/slack-roadmap/
"Slack laid out its plan to stay ahead of its workplace chat competitors today with new products for its 2.3 million daily active users, up from 2 million in December. The big changes will center around message enhancements, greater Usability, and voice and video chat.
That last one is huge. You’ll soon be able to switch directly into a voice or video chat inside of Slack. This could strike a heavy blow to Skype, Google Hangouts and other multi-media collaboration tools. Slack says it will begin testing these features very soon."
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