A few weeks ago, I read an article about Slack, a marvelous business tool that is useful for team communications and project information gathering. Slack has been a hit among knowledge workers, particularly people who manage online services. I signed up for the free trial and was blown away. However, despite my deep respect for the product, I'm going to have to walk away from it.
The issue is not with Slack itself. I think Slack is the victim of the "network effect" to some extent, or the reverse of it, rather. I don't have a network on Slack. Therefore, it is a really cool way to organize project information and data streams. However, I already have invested into +Evernote and +Smartsheet.
While I do not have networks on those products either, they are rather powerful without the network. And so, I find that the ability to create streams of information rather than a giant pile of...email is a great idea. Slack makes sense in so many ways.
I have written in the past that my problem with Evernote is that I do NOT need to remember everything, thus I engage in active deleting of information. Some information is more valuable if it doesn't get in your way. So, I've slowly started to segregate information into archives, working spaces, and stuff that can and should be deleted.
With the help of +IFTTT, I am crudely reproducing some of the great Integrations provided by Slack. RSS feeds and tweets are appended to Evernote notes, which I can periodically delete or archive. Having used Slack for the last few weeks, I have learned a new way to sort information into Evernote that makes it, once again, a great product for managing my everyday needs.
Smartsheet comes into the equation because it is great for organizing work, and then I can dip into Evernote and Google Drive to attach working documents.
Standing back from it all, Evernote catches information and Smartsheet organizes it for action. This way, information doesn't get in the way of doing.
No comments:
Post a Comment