More better communication methods

[Allan Merz-Rosendale]

Hey everyone. I'm fairly new and don't know the social dynamics perfectly, considering most times I'm at the space it's during other's "working hours", and it's hard to come in during evening hours to work on projects or play around with the rest of you. That being said Google groups is great, but has anyone ever considered slack as a method of communication?

[Jason K]

Ooh. I use slack with some IT/AV people from different cities and it works great. If we haven't looked into it we should.

Jason Keller

> On Dec 4, 2016, at 17:12, Allan Merz-Rosendale <allan.r...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hey everyone. I'm fairly new and don't know the social dynamics perfectly, considering most times I'm at the space it's during other's "working hours", and it's hard to come in during evening hours to work on projects or play around with the rest of you. That being said Google groups is great, but has anyone ever considered slack as a method of communication?
>

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[Ray Scheufler]

More options does not necessarily result in better communication. In my experience, more options leads to more fragmentation which leads to people missing out on some conversations.

I know that I have enough communication channels to monitor that adding another one would result in me not using it. You can feel free to set up and try to get people to use a slack channel but I just wanted to warn about fragmentation.

Ray Scheufler

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[Barry Von Ahsen]

we have a rather underutilized freenode irc channel - #area515

-barry

On Sun, Dec 4, 2016, 17:05 Ray Scheufler <dr.bob....@gmail.com> wrote:

More options does not necessarily result in better communication. In my experience, more options leads to more fragmentation which leads to people missing out on some conversations.

I know that I have enough communication channels to monitor that adding another one would result in me not using it. You can feel free to set up and try to get people to use a slack channel but I just wanted to warn about fragmentation.

Ray Scheufler

On Dec 4, 2016 6:17 PM, "Jason K" <jkim...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ooh. I use slack with some IT/AV people from different cities and it works great. If we haven't looked into it we should.

Jason Keller

> On Dec 4, 2016, at 17:12, Allan Merz-Rosendale <allan.r...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hey everyone. I'm fairly new and don't know the social dynamics perfectly, considering most times I'm at the space it's during other's "working hours", and it's hard to come in during evening hours to work on projects or play around with the rest of you. That being said Google groups is great, but has anyone ever considered slack as a method of communication?
>
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[Tim-S]

What Ray said. By all means, if you think it's useful, set it up and use it. We used to have an IRC channel that served a similar purpose. It technically still exists but is rarely used.

[Ray Scheufler]

Also, I didn't intend to be too negative.  I have to deal with a team at work that has a serious case of ooh shiny and thinks that every communication problem can be solved by a new tool. Consequently we have 3 or 4 different places to fund information based on its type and who created it.

With that out of the way, what problem are you trying to solve? Are you looking to come to the space when other people are around or are you looking to come when you won't bother other people? Both are valid but the solutions are different.

If you want to come when people are around, one mechanism that Arch Reactor (a space in St Louis) uses is an Internet connected switch that sends an email to their Google group whenever it is switched. That way people know if the space is open or closed. I have been toying with building one for our space but even if I build it, it takes members using it to actually provide value. If nobody ever switches it then it doesn't provide any information.

Ray Scheufler

On Dec 4, 2016 7:37 PM, "Tim-S" <t.she...@gmail.com> wrote:

What Ray said. By all means, if you think it's useful, set it up and use it. We used to have an IRC channel that served a similar purpose. It technically still exists but is rarely used.

[Bailey Steinfadt]

Ray, 

Could you connect it to the light switch? 

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[Ray Scheufler]

That is one possibility. The downside of that option is if you are the type of person that wants to go down to the space for a quiet place you wouldn't be able to use the space without broadcasting your presence to the world.

I may start with a simple button that triggers an email to the list. I will try to set it up with a fixed subject and from line so that people can filter the messages automatically.

Ray Scheufler

Ray Scheufler

On Dec 4, 2016 9:15 PM, "Bailey Steinfadt" <runne...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ray, 

Could you connect it to the light switch? 

On Sun, Dec 4, 2016 at 9:05 PM Ray Scheufler <dr.bob....@gmail.com> wrote:

Also, I didn't intend to be too negative.  I have to deal with a team at work that has a serious case of ooh shiny and thinks that every communication problem can be solved by a new tool. Consequently we have 3 or 4 different places to fund information based on its type and who created it.

With that out of the way, what problem are you trying to solve? Are you looking to come to the space when other people are around or are you looking to come when you won't bother other people? Both are valid but the solutions are different.

If you want to come when people are around, one mechanism that Arch Reactor (a space in St Louis) uses is an Internet connected switch that sends an email to their Google group whenever it is switched. That way people know if the space is open or closed. I have been toying with building one for our space but even if I build it, it takes members using it to actually provide value. If nobody ever switches it then it doesn't provide any information.

Ray Scheufler

On Dec 4, 2016 7:37 PM, "Tim-S" <t.she...@gmail.com> wrote:

What Ray said. By all means, if you think it's useful, set it up and use it. We used to have an IRC channel that served a similar purpose. It technically still exists but is rarely used.

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[Nabil Hanke]

Maker spaces tend to be 'ooh shiney' factories. That's kinda how it goes. I have wondered about an irc display terminal- scrolling stick ticker style. That could give life to the irc and give bidirectional comms "is anyone there?" 

The value of any system is dictated more by its utilization than its potential or feature set.  Which brings us back to the question - what is [proposed solution] supposed to be fixing/improving? Is it a failure in the tool or the users? 

Thank you,

Nabíl

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[Allan Merz-Rosendale]

Honestly the problem I was trying to solve was having notifications other than email get pushed to my phone when events were announced to the group. I would enable email notifications from groups, but a lot of stuff that goes on in here is repated to others projects and I wanted something more filter-able so I could simply keep track of big events happening with the entire group, or keep current with projects I'm interested in.
I like Ray's idea of having a button to let people in the group know when people in the space are there and want to be social. Kind of fun.

[Allan Merz-Rosendale]

And I think this is especially pertinent with the upcoming move. I thought it would be easier to coordinate if a lot of people knew when more people were around to help (moving alone is no fun).

[Bailey Steinfadt]

We could start event posts with a specific string, if that's helpful. Otherwise, we post to meetup, which is just the events.

On Mon, Dec 5, 2016, 08:13 Allan Merz-Rosendale <allan.r...@gmail.com> wrote:

And I think this is especially pertinent with the upcoming move. I thought it would be easier to coordinate if a lot of people knew when more people were around to help (moving alone is no fun).

[Dan Hockey]

Couldn't this option be added to the pi that runs the rfid? Add a separate switch or button. If someone fells like having company then hit the button.

 

[Ray Scheufler]

It could but I would rather it be a separate thing.  I don't want to add complexity to a system that needs to be reliable.  It isn't too hard to have a separate thing.  It doesn't need to be too complicated.  I am just planning on using an ESP8266 and a button.

Does anyone have a staples easy button or equivalent?  I think something like that would be good.  I also might use one of the spare arcade buttons that is floating around.

Ray Scheufler

On Mon, Dec 5, 2016 at 10:18 AM, Dan Hockey <icep...@gmail.com> wrote:

Couldn't this option be added to the pi that runs the rfid? Add a separate switch or button. If someone fells like having company then hit the button.

 

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[David Champion]

For Event notifications, we do have a google calendar you can subscribe to.

-dc

[Tim-S]

I'd like to return this to the original thread topic for a bit.

People who use our IRC channel, would you be interested in moving that chatroom to Slack?
People who would like to use Slack, would an IRC client serve your needs?

Personally, I stopped hanging out on our IRC channel when, a new phone or two ago, I simply stopped having an IRC client in my pocket.

[Brad Freese]

Ray,
I think I saw the kind of button you speak of on the Hack Rack Saturday. I want to say it's in the same open, gray basket as all those tiny bearings.

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