This is the second in a series of posts showing how we use Campfire as our virtual office. All screenshots shown are from real usage and were taken during one week in September.
In the first “Behind the scenes” post, we showed how we use Campfire for design. Now let’s take a look at how it helps us code. To the examples…
Offer code advice
Ryan sees a couple different ways to code an element and asks Sam for advice. A few things to note here: 1) They enter the “Small Talk” room that we use for sidebar discussions. Chatting in a separate room eliminates distractions and keeps the main room clear for the rest of the team. 2) Sharing images inline makes it easy to see what’s being discussed. This is superhandy for both design and programming issues. 3) The “View paste” feature makes it easy to share snippets of code (and clearly differentiates code from regular entries).
Keep code clean and clear
We always strive to keep code clean. Here, Ryan writes a method and shares it with the wizards who guide him toward a simpler solution.
Explain an ongoing code project
Sam and Jason discuss iCal integration challenges. Campfire is great for quick “check-ins” like this (and link sharing too).
Support a code suggestion with hard data
Jeremy posts the sizes of search terms in order to support his argument for sorting by relevance instead of creation date. “View paste” comes in handy again, this time for displaying data.
Related: Behind the scenes at 37signals: Design
Coming soon: How we use Campfire for copywriting, sysadmin, and more.
Jose Espinal
on 19 Nov 07Great! Thanks for sharing the coding part!
Tim
on 19 Nov 07I always thought Ryan was solely a designer.
Had no idea he was a Ruby coding machine.
Marc Hedlund
on 19 Nov 07Other than “Small Talk,” how many Campfire rooms does 37s use internally, and for what (general) purposes?
Tim
on 19 Nov 07I believe 37s uses two Campfire rooms. 1) “All talk”, 2) “Small talk”
See Jason’s discuss in a comment post on the following page.
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/681-behind-the-scenes-at-37signals-design
karl
on 19 Nov 07When you guys use campfire internally, is it down half the time and dropping messages the other half—or are those features just for customers?
rudy
on 19 Nov 07You guys are the cat’s pajamas!
Cosmin
on 19 Nov 07This is more for Sam. Were you able to figure out the recurrence problems in the current ruby iCal libraries? I have the same issues. Just curious.
ML
on 19 Nov 07Other than “Small Talk,” how many Campfire rooms does 37s use internally, and for what (general) purposes?
Here’s a list of the rooms we use (some more than others)...
“All talk” = main chat room
“Small talk” = sidebar discussions
“Support” = support discussions
“Servers” = Notes and details about the server cluster
“History” = rooms for specific products where we dump images in order to create an archive of progress
“Fireside Chat” = interview room
Tom G.
on 19 Nov 07We are very big on asking the rest of the team for advise at my company. It increases our performance as programmers dramatically by bringing the experience of a bigger group to bear on a particular problem. This is almost another take on weighing the merits of single person offices versus multiple people working in the same room.
What I find it interesting that you you use Campfire for this purpose rather than in-person, phone, email, etc.
I’m very interested to know how disruptive this is. I.e. do you have to discourage people from asking questions google could answer. Do 2 or 3 people get sidetracked investigating an answer only to find that others working in parallel have already answered it?
BTW karl, methinks you are blatantly inflammatory…
ML
on 19 Nov 07Tom, we usually use Campfire in quick bursts so there’s no much “investigating an answer only to find that others working in parallel have already answered it.”
One tip: We usually specify whom a question is intended for by starting the entry with that person’s initials. Example: “MI, can I upload that file now?”
daniel
on 20 Nov 07very cool work method…
Anonymous Coward
on 20 Nov 07Looks like Instant Messaging to me – what is the difference between working over AIM/GTalk/etc. vs. Campfire? I know many companies who use IM in the same way whether coding or selling advertising – including Microsoft. Does that make Microsoft cool? Not sure of the big revelation here. I agree that IM, using Campfire or another client, is going to (or already is) replace and/or usurp some of the importance away from email. The 37s team is doing what everyone else is doing too.
Anonymous Coward
on 20 Nov 07AC: Why Campfire is better for group chats than IM.
Anonymous Coward
on 20 Nov 07Thanks AC. Some of those make sense and are good reasons. I am trying to think which of those feature/benefit statements would put me over the edge. We tried Campfire but it just wasn’t sticky enough for us. Many of the incremental benefits listed for campfire just don’t over-rule traditional IM – for us. If I had to rank them in descending order of value, I would probably go:
1. Home vs. homeless 2. File sharing – This is still a problem with IM aggregators, but not for long.
I don’t think these two matter:
1. Persistence – Maybe this is important in social situations, but chat is an instant gratification mechanism, especially in business. The whole point I go to IM’ing is because email is too slow. Persistance is counter to the ethos of IM. What would grandpa say – pre-fax era anyone?
2. Security – I don’t know about you, but none of my chats really matter to anyone but me and my colleagues/friends/family.
These have been rendered obsolete:
1. Network Compatability – Adium/Trillian slay this dragon masterfully now. 2. History and Transcripts – Adium got game here too.
Bottom line, Campfire is rusty and is becoming irrelevant. This is not the fault of 37s, it is still a nice IM implementation with now only 2 true differentiators. Do I think there is something ultimately disruptive about IM vs. Email? Definitely. Is Campfire the killer app for IM? No. It was forward thinking at a point in time but it has been caught/surpassed by competition. It is time for the next leap forward for Campfire that would render it more useful than email. Bring it on! (BTW – JF – you could charge for that version.)
JF
on 20 Nov 07AC: Persistence matters more than anything else. It’s the #1 most important thing about Campfire.
Campfire isn’t an IM tool.
If you think Campfire is rusty and not for you then don’t use it. We think it’s fresh and probably the most valuable product we’ve ever built. We couldn’t run our business without it.
In fact, last week when or servers were down we jumped onto IM to go a group chat between our 8 people. OMG what a messy situation. It was terrible. IM is great for one-on-one, we use it all the time. IM is shit for groups.
To each their own.
karl
on 20 Nov 07Tom G – I wasnt trying to inflame, just taking out my frustrations on a blog post instead of a live person. Let me assure you that less damage was done this way.
JF – Thanks for being honest about the downtime, and I guess I’ll wear my troll hat proudly. It is specifically because campfire usually works so well and is so valuable for us all day long that it’s so frustrating and time wasting when there are performance issues.
We moved to IRC and IM during the downtime, and it just straight up sucked.
Tom G.
on 20 Nov 07Fair enough Karl.
I guess I would have to use Campfire regularly to have a valid opinion about its suitibility for the purpose intended.
This discussion is closed.