Unconference Session - Code for America

Brigade Congress 2017, Philadelphia, PA

PREPARED BY CARL V. LEWIS of OPEN SAVANNAH - 13 OCT., 2017

Contributions by @themightychris

Please note that this document was compiled on a turbulent flight to Philly from Savannah via Atlanta; typos likely.

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TITLE: "Slack is Eating the Community: Ehtical and logistical problems; alternatives and workarounds; going cold turkey and weaning off Slack-diction"

Just as the noble ideal of digital democracy hasn't exactly panned out as we thought it would (yet), Slack – once hailed as a panacea to the deluge of crowded email inboxes –– has failed to live up to its expectations, too, and I urge here that open-source communities find alternatives to Slack as it stands in fundamental opposition to all for which we stand.

CONS:

• Slack is fundamentally in diametric opposition to working in the open.
• Not open-source, so why do we use it for open-source projects? Makes. No. Sense.
• Synchronous to the point of data obesity – a.k.a. information overload
• Only those @here at any given time are part of conversation – no scheduling of these spontaneous discussions, etiher. We all lead different lives with different schedules.
• High barrier-to-entry for some; others actively dislike and choose not to use because of its lack of structure and designed expectations of synchronous response.
• Lack of semantic structure that provides a narrative, organizes knowledge in human fashion.
• API that conveniently (for Slack) allows lots of incoming data sources but hardly any simple ways of pushing data out of Slack elsewhere.
  • Sub-issue: A bot could theoretically be built but it would still (a) likely require use of / command in Slack and, in turn, conscious actions on part of user and (b) it would need advanced ML and textual analysis to structure information from Slack in proper taxonomy.
• Assumption exists among many that because it was posted in Slack, everyone knows about it. WRONG. Sorry, Charlie.
• Cumbersome to maintain availability types: here/away/do not disturb status. Why can't I simply go on "vacation mode"?
• Only those with experience working on tech teams usually have prior habit of keeping Slack open. Thus, others outside of tech backgrounds rarely log on to see mentions/messages.
• Public servants find Slack befuddling, to say the least.
• If what we're doing is too unimportant for email notifications, are we really saying our work is important?
• Slack definitely isn't meeting people where they are.
• Slack is like the office water cooler, which is fine. But do we really want to hang out at the office water cooler all day and do our work there?
• You hit the 10K message limit way faster than you think; at that point, you permamently begin losing shared knowledge.
• Has a short-and-fast format that discourages thoughtful feedback
• Typically lacking context of what's being discussed -- particularly for visual work
• Slack is classified as a Schedule IV controlled substance by the Interaction Design Foundation. Its addiction rate is high, and user habit leads to inability to switch.
• Inaccessible by default rather than open by default; you must at least make an account with Slackin (if that's set up) just to view content.
• Mistaken belief that Slack messages aren't committed to permalink, which makes abuse and violations of CoC more likely. WRONG! Slack messages do have permalinks.
• Slack chat often used in lieu of IRL meetings or video conferences;

Pros:

• Stickiness (also a con; see: slack addiction)
• Emotional design
• Ecosystem of integrations
• Channels allow new ideas to spring forth organically
• Sociality; builds relationships across geographic spaces in addition to getting work done.

Question for consideration: Do any of the above pros merit a competitive advantage for Slack that can't be built by others? (definition: 'a condition or circumstance that puts a company in a favorable or superior business position.')

Needs for alternatives to have:

• Real-time chat.
• Emojis. 😎 More emojis. 😂 Did I mention emojis? 🔥
• Collaborative, real-time document editing
• File-sharing
• Wiki-type
• Low barrier to entry
• Ideally, some integration with email for public servants.
• Open by default.

Current alternatives:

• matrix - Matrix is an open standard for interoperable, decentralised, real-time communication over IP. There are an array of clients and servers available, think modern IRC
• Gitter - Real-time chat oriented around github orgs and projects. Acquired and open-sourced by GitLab.
• Rocket.Chat - Almost exactly the same as Slack but open-source and extendable. OPEN SOURCE!
• Mattermost -
• GitHub - Maybe we should just GitHub more and utilize all the tools built around GitHub?
• Basecamp - Oldie but a goodie. Considered in project management circles as baseline, simplest yet most functional project tool.
• Notion.so ($$$, but a perfectly legal hack exists that's in line with their ToS)
• Quip - Fantastic for collaborative documents; great chat; rather expensive; no current ability to make group folders publicly editable/viewable by default.
• Discourse - On its face, an ideal, extendable solution that should work but never has caught on; people have this odd and illogical ideological opposition to 'forums' -- likely thanks to the early days of the Web.
• Dropbox Paper - Very nice UI that pulls users in; individual papers can be made publicly available for editing and viewing; collections cannot.
• GSuite - Documents too print-centric; vast array of options distracts from core experience of authoring text; Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, Hangouts all exist in separate Google silos.
• Laddr - Original CMS and project facilitator for brigades. Integrates with Slack and Discourse.
• BrigadeHub - Project of c4sf. Development discontinued.

Issues

• Switching costs (not financial or data migration costs but habit costs)
• May alienate developer community that uses Slack for 18 different teams
• Lack of integrations for other alternatives
• Getting people to use alternatives; Slack withdrawal syndrome; no current tapering drug.
• More TK

Slacktivism?

TK