Managing Community

I often get asked what are a few of my favorite tools for managing a community. I reply with Slack and Zoom! I have used many tools that attempted to solve the problems around asynchronous communication and nothing has come close to it. Today I am a member of a dozen slack communities ranging from ten to thousands of members. The chat rooms mirror the same form of expression we use on other social media applications via hashtags. It has integrations into all the popular platforms, and I have hooked up bots to it to control outside applications such as code deployment. In every organization I have turned it up on, I have seen my daily email count drop immediately, and often down to zero. It not only replicates the infamous water cooler but it assists with tasking, sizing, and messaging across many time zones. If I were applying to two different firms and everything was equal, but only one of them was using slack for the company, I’m only accepting to join the team that uses this product. It has revolutionized community and corporate communications for me. For new users to the application, I have a few starting points. Your account is spam until you have an avatar. Don’t use channel announcements unless it’s an emergency, and maintain rooms before there are too many to archive. Each room should have a purpose and try to avoid duplication. Always keep your status up to date, and use mobile applications. Asynchronous communication only works when you take part in the platform. No, I do not work for Slack, but I’m grateful for the application. The second tool is Zoom. Again there are a plethora of options for screen sharing, video chat, and presentations. I have found nothing to compare to zoom's latency control and buffers. Sadly, Slack sucks at video chat. Rarely, and I mean rarely do meetings blur or drop, including meetings with people in countries across the pond. Secondly, it has the Family Feud ( 'Gallery' ) View. When everyone's cameras are on, I swear it feels like we are all around a giant round table. Often, I am only wearing a t-shirt. Kidding, I always wear pants.

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