Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by alfra 3290 days ago
The problem they claim to address is real. However, the product not really addresses it. It's too close to email and existing messengers.

[ Problem ]

- Meetings have the potential to really keep a team together

- Teams are distributed throughout geography, time zones or daily life patterns

- So how to bring GOOD meetings online, and perhaps even make them asynchronous?

"Meetings" come in different flavors, for example

- Weekly or monthly meetings to look back, learn, and discuss how to move on

- Daily scrum / daily standup to get a shared view of the day

- Ad hoc meetings to address a smaller but immediate issue

- Water cooler meetings which allow for serendipity

...

So for meetings in person, the real challenge is to get everyone attending, even if there is lot of urgent / important work to do. On the flip side: Keep the signal / noise ratio of the meeting so everyone feels it's time well spent.

[ Solution ]

So my vision for a better tool would include:

- Separation of reading mode and writing mode. You should be able to write in the sense of offloading thoughts without the need / option to read through everyone else's notes at the same time

- Asynchronous default. Stuff you write should be considered a draft until intentionally "published" (exception: urgent stuff / water cooler stuff). That would allow revising bigger thoughts before a "meeting".

- Even asynchronous, virtual meetings should have schedules. So for "daily" meetings, there should be a function that makes sure that everyone reads and writes at least once a day. For "monthly" at least once a month, but without that becoming a continuous "monthly meeting", which wouldn't allow to really focus on it.