Micheal Pettibone writes:
In Getting Real, there is an entire chapter dedicated to the subject of “Meetings are Toxic”.
It seems like you guys use Campfire extensively throughout the day as a replacement for the typical corporate (physical) meeting.
What I’m curious to know is how using Campfire all day is different from that of a typical corporate meeting. They both (chat or a physical meeting) seem to be a type of a “meeting”, which distracts you from your normal daily work load.
Also, as 37signals grows with employees – do you find that using chat (Campfire) becomes ever more difficult/distracting because the number of conversations between various co-workers multiplies?
Campfire differs from a traditional meeting in significant ways:
1. You can pay attention to something other than the meeting without offending or distracting anyone else.
2. You can leave the room and come back later and read everything you’ve missed. You can even search for specific terms in the transcript.
3. Typing forces people to be more economical in what they communicate. There’s a lot less extraneous chatter in a Campfire chat than there is in a typical meeting.
4. You can have a sidebar discussion without interrupting the flow of others. Create a separate room and chat about something you want to keep private or that doesn’t concern the whole team.
5. You don’t have to be there. Want to focus 100% on the task at hand? Just log out of Campfire and get to work.
As for the second part of the question: With our growth, the chat room has gotten somewhat busier. In order to prevent distraction, we have more sidebar conversations in different rooms.
We’ve also tried to cut down on inessential banter. At the same time, we don’t want to put a muzzle on the normal “water cooler” conversations that our remote team only gets via Campfire. It’s a balancing act.
Ro
on 19 Jan 08Absolutely genius. Love it.
With what number of employees do sidebar chats begin to constitute more than %50 of total meeting conversation for the company?
Micheal P
on 19 Jan 08Thanks for posting my question :)
Have a good weekend all.
Ed Clarke
on 19 Jan 08Jason,
Thanks for the great SEED-08 conference in Chicago this week. A great group of presenters in an inspirational setting.
Your presentation today was inspiring to a group of people looking for a way to make meaning while launching their own businesses, even while 37 Signals was temporarily off-line. Because 37 Signals users feel like they are well taken care of, I imagine most users were cheering you on rather than complaining of an outage.
What is really amazing about 37 Signals is the way that the company and its products fit together so well—great tools for distributed teams from a distributed team. If you asked me, I would tell you that 37 Signals stands for “getting distributed teams to click”. I know you didn’t ask me, but I am really interested in your recipe for making 37 Sig. click.
“Getting Real” talks about using Campfire to stay synched, but could you talk more about how you organize your team?
Thanks!
Kodia
on 19 Jan 086. In most cases there’s no need to react instantly. So it provides you with a bit of time to think about a reply, even if it is only a few seconds…
Which is also why I like email a lot better than the phone….
Nascar
on 21 Jan 08I am not particular sure that group chat / typing can really outweigh the benefits of a conference call. Because sometimes you lose the emotional tones of the involved parties, and I can’t stress how important that is when it comes to live presentations.
Jordan Robert Dobson
on 21 Jan 08We tried doing this for our quick morning meetings for a few months and at the same time we started working part of the week at home. I have to say it’s not easy… What we figured out is that we could get much more done when we were all at the office together. Relying on chat instead of discussing in person really slowed things down. Maybe jumping into chat and working from home was a bad idea? Eventually, we’ll go for it again once we have our “shit” together better.
The good side to it was that Campfire made us realize the areas of our work process that were weak. It was also frustrating at times waiting for a response from people… I always felt like I was thinking “Hello! are you there? oh there you are!”
I liked the convenience but I didn’t like having to make sure I had someone’s full attention.
Don Schenck
on 21 Jan 08Meetings, in and of themselves, aren’t evil.
It’s just that people rush to hold a meeting when it’s not necessary. A meeting should be like a Five Guys burger: infrequent and oh-so-good.
Instead, they’re more like sex; happens often, often routine, and occassionally fantastic.
Jimmy
on 22 Jan 08“1. You can pay attention to something other than the meeting without offending or distracting anyone else.”
If this is the case then you probably shouldn’t even be in that meeting.
“5. You don’t have to be there. Want to focus 100% on the task at hand? Just log out of Campfire and get to work.”
So you guys call a meeting and anyone can just leave or not show up if they feel like it? Kind of defeating the purpose of a meeting if someone that needs to be there just leaves cause they feel they have more important things to do. I know I don’t have that freedom at my workplace!
I think by these two items you are referring to using campfire more as a replacement for IM software, then a replacement for an actual meeting. It sounds like what you do in it is very informal and that it’s just a substitute for chatting via IM.
JF
on 22 Jan 08So you guys call a meeting and anyone can just leave or not show up if they feel like it? Kind of defeating the purpose of a meeting if someone that needs to be there just leaves cause they feel they have more important things to do. I know I don’t have that freedom at my workplace!
Yup. If people want to leave a meeting then it’s a good sign the meeting content isn’t valuable.
Don Schenck
on 22 Jan 08... and yet another sacred cow is slaughtered by Jason.
KevinB
on 22 Jan 08Uh… a meeting doesn’t require Rackspace to be up.
I look fwd to sporting the troll cap.
Jimmy
on 22 Jan 08“Yup. If people want to leave a meeting then it’s a good sign the meeting content isn’t valuable.”
Or it’s that the person is taking advantage of the fact that the meeting atmosphere is so informal, so they think they can just log off and work on more pressing matters, or just not pay attn to what people are typing because it’s so easy to alt-tab to another window.
Jimmy
on 22 Jan 08Also… who’s to say what content is considered valuable? What if you have an employee who is swamped with work but is needed in a meeting to explain things to others.. and he just decides not to show up or leave early because he’s too busy and not getting anything out of the meeting?
I dunno.. I guess a lot of these methods really depend on the type of team you have. I just don’t see it working in most cases.
Don Schenck
on 23 Jan 08@Jimmy: If the person missed or skips meetings often enough - for whatever reason - that part of their job will go away because of poor or no performance.
It really is THAT simple.
This discussion is closed.