Cutting Some Slack (OPINION)
by June 8, 2015 12:00 am 117 views
These days, it’s pretty common to answer a work email during the evening or text ideas to a colleague over the weekend.
Work correspondence can now reach you anywhere, any time, and that can be daunting. However, the upside is big.
Being able to hold a conversation via email might mean you were able to leave work earlier, rather than staying to wait by the office phone.
Sending a text at the moment you think of an idea means it is fresh on your mind. And it’s done. There’s one less thing you have to remember on Monday.
As technology evolves, interoffice communication gets easier and more convenient, but tech trends change rapidly, and some of us have trouble keeping up.
Luckily for the editorial staff at the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal, we have the Fast 15 honorees to help.
Each spring, we recognize 15 professionals in their 20s for our annual Fast 15 issue (the latest published May 11), and they are often on the cutting edge of technology. Although people of all ages can be up on the latest innovations, checking with the younger generation is always a safe bet.
This year, almost all of the Fast 15ers I interviewed use Slack for interoffice communication. The mobile app features chat rooms, private groups and direct messaging that use searchable hashtags to organize conversations by topic.
It integrates with a variety of other services and allows users the option to limit message exchanges to those on their team and also keeps every conversation pertaining to a topic in one spot.
The following for Slack is huge, and the California company has become a darling among tech startups. It was founded less than two years ago and is now worth an estimated $2.8 billion.
With the advance of wearables and other burgeoning innovations, communication will likely become even more instantaneous, focused and organized.
Maybe it will make us more efficient and productive, clocking fewer hours in the office and more at home with loved ones and pursuing non-work-related passions. If that’s the case, there’s no complaints here.