Slacking in a Theater
Over the past few months, I did something I’ve never done before. I planned and organized a short drama production, and we just performed it last week.
Looking back, the most challenging aspect was communicating between 30 people for different things. Our team needed to write the script, find the actors, buy or make props, run practices often and coordinate with an external AV team for programming cues.
In selecting a communication platform, we considered GroupMe, Whatsapp and Telegram, but eventually landed on Slack. I was excited about that decision since I’ve had a great experience using Slack for many projects before. I hoped the same for this team, but that was not the case. In fact, the general consensus was that Slack wasn’t working for us and we moved over to Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp pretty quickly.
In talking with my friend it was brought up that I’ve never used Slack for a non-software development project, and maybe that was the problem — Slack is built for developers.
It’s interesting because Slack’s mission is to make working life simpler, more pleasant and more productive — for everyone. Everyone from software developers to playwrights, from start-up to enterprise. Slack has many user case studies to support this, so what was different with my team?
I think the onboarding experience could have been improved.
When you’re creating a new Slack, you’re asked about your purpose. Are you using it for work, school, shared interest group or other purposes?
If you select ‘school’ or ‘shared interest group’, you’re asked for the team size and that’s it. But if you select ‘work’, you’re asked about your industry: consumer good, financial services, tech, the list goes on. It finally asks you about your role, and you’re officially on Slack. I think ‘school’ an ‘shared interest group’ should also ask about what’s being worked on.
That gives Slack answers on how to go a step further for helping new users.
I think suggested templates would be cool. When you start a Slack, you’re given #general and #random channels by default and the rest is up to you. I’ve made many Slack channels, but since I was brand new to drama productions, I didn’t really know what channels to start until the specific need popped up.
I think that’s the case with most start-ups or first time slack users in general too. But if Slack knew your specific purpose, it could start the set up for you, with relevant channels like #props #script #practices for me. Why not #business #product, #hiring for a tech start-up? Or #transportation, #practices #playbook for the school basketball team? The list goes on.
Onboarding sets the tone for the work ahead, and while entering an empty room can inspire creativity for some, decor might do the same for others.
