Slack and other hacks: how my family stays in touch
Published in
5 min readAug 5, 2015
Keeping up with the Zhus
Like many families, my family is rarely physically in the same place. My sister lives and works in San Francisco, I go to school just outside of Chicago (but am currently working in D.C. for the summer), and my parents divide their time between China and the States. At any given point, the four of us are in four different places and/or timezones. Some of us might even be behind the Great Firewall of China without a VPN. From ye olde chain emails to a family Slack organization, we’ve experimented with many forms of communication. I have reviewed them all here (full disclaimer we are an Apple family):
Pros:
- We all check our email (at least) daily, so it’s the best way to reach everyone about news, updates, or something urgent.
- Email is a pretty well-ingrained habit in all of us.
Cons:
- My parents have Gmail accounts, and due to various kerfuffles, Google performs quite poorly in China. My mom has had to resort to Yahoo Mail instead.
- Emails can dissolve into chains of one-line reactions or go off topic very quickly. As a result, our inboxes pile up with half-finished email threads that are eventually purged or simply collect dust forever.
- Emails are pretty indistinguishable, so a major life announcement looks the same as a question about my mom’s vegetable porridge recipe.
- My dad uses the subject line as the email body (see above).
Usage: 2009 — present
Text/Phone Call
Pros:
- Typically the quickest way to reach someone.
- It’s nice to hear someone’s voice without having to deal with crappy internet connections and poor video quality.
Cons:
- We have to be in the same country, which is often not the case.
- $$$. For our parents who are not on our AT&T Family Plan, the cost grows pretty quickly.
- Coordinating time zones is a challenge. The parents usually call us while we’re busy, so we end up having a five second conversation in which we just say “I’ll call you back later” (and unfortunately forget to do).
Usage: 2009 — present
Skype
Pros:
- Free phone calls (this is 2009 ok).
Cons:
- This was back when laptops didn’t have a guaranteed built-in camera, so setting up webcams was a hassle.
- Time zones.
- My parents would never log onto Skype because they forgot they had it as an option.
Usage: 2009–2010
Vonage
Pros:
- It gives us an American phone number to use while living overseas so we can make international calls using the Internet.
Cons:
- $$$.
- Time zones.
- The Vonage connection got progressively worse as the years went on, so we finally canceled the service.
Usage: 2009 — 2015
Viber
Pros:
- It makes decent calls for free from an iPhone so long as we have an internet connection.
Cons:
- Time zones.
- Only my dad ever uses Viber (specifically to call us), so adoption was reluctant and not very widespread.
- While the sound and connection used to be pretty good, in recent years those few redeeming qualities also went downhill.
Usage: 2010 — 2014
Pros:
- The hold-to-record voice messages feature is a nice intermediary between phone calls and texting. It’s basically like leaving a voicemail, but you don’t have to wait for the beep.
- My mom likes to forward us funny videos she gets from her Chinese friends and our extended family (seriously go look at these dogs).
Cons:
- Although recording voice messages in public is common in China, they still haven’t quite caught on in the States where it’s pretty awkward to be talking to your phone rather than on it.
- Only my mom really uses WeChat on a regular basis. The rest of us forget to check it because we don’t have many other contacts outside of our family using WeChat.
Usage: 2012 — 2014
Path
Pros:
- It’s a novel way to keep track of each other’s whereabouts, and because of the private nature of the app, we only really get interesting status updates.
Cons:
- Katie, who was a former Path power user and got us all using Path, stopped using it, which had a domino effect on the rest of our family.
- It never became something we all checked regularly. My dad rarely used it and my mom would upload a whole slew of photos all at once every now and then.
Usage: 2012 — 2014
FaceTime
Pros:
- Free video calling!
Cons:
- Time zones.
Usage: 2014 — present
iMessage
Pros:
- Like texting but free (since we all use iPhones).
Cons:
- Parents have yet to set up iMessage on their computers and they don’t have data as part of their cell service plans in China.
Usage: 2012–2014
Photo Stream
Pros:
- It’s way better than sending a bunch of photos as email attachments or waiting to physically swipe through images on your device in person.
- We take most of our photos on our phones now anyway, so it makes sense to keep photo sharing on mobile devices.
- The bulk “like” and comment features keep the discussion on photos rather than cluttering various inboxes.
Cons:
- Requires some set-up and iCloud wrangling that may get complicated.
Usage: 2012 — 2014
TinyLetter
Pros:
- Handy to have all everyone’s life update in one place because we often forget that we told one person something but didn’t tell everyone else.
- It’s fun! Also the newsletter has a guaranteed click rate of 100%. (If it doesn’t, yell at your family.)
Cons:
- It involves a decent amount of coordination because everyone has to submit an update, or the editor (moi) has to summarize their conversations with others.
- Someone has to write it and I am ultra lazy.
Usage: April 2015 — present
Slack
Pros:
- Consolidates communication into one place — we have different channels ranging from #moms-recipes” (where my mom just uploads pictures of recipes we want to cook) to #katecole (where Katie and I just talk to each other for some unknown reason).
- It makes us ~hip~
- The @mentions are handy for getting someone’s attention, even if they don’t have Slack open and are 6000 miles away.
- It gives my mom an opportunity to build up her emoji game.
- I sat with my parents, downloaded the mobile app for them, set up their account, and taught them how to use it so now they actually use it regularly!
Cons:
- Though photo uploads are much easier, it can still take a lot of time to upload and view a bunch of photos in Slack (especially if the image files are large).
Usage: May 2015 — present
How do you keep in touch? Leave a comment with what works for you!
