So, one of the biggest things I learned this week was Slack. It’s an app that keeps a team in one place. You can have multiple discussions and group members.
And everyone’s off of Facebooks, which is the ultimate time-suck. More-over, it’s free.
The set-up was a little rough, but I hate setting up new things. I’d spent this past week setting up sharable folders and different chat rooms and… just a lot of different stuff. So, by the time I made it to Slack, my patience was at an all-time low.
I’m glad I figured it out though!
You can download Slack to your phone where you can still have access to all your chat lines. You can still coordinate with your team on the fly.
The one thing we were trying to do, though, was to also have our files here. It would be super convenient to be able to chat AND have our shared files located in the same location, but, alas, that is not meant to be.
As you can see the in the screen shot, you can have multiple discussions. Do you see that on the left? Under the heading Whiskey Witches, you have all your Channels. Those are topic-specific conversations that are easy to search.
You’ll see that one of those is #Docs. You can put links to your shared documents, and it will take you to the document where you can choose to download it, edit it online, or it will open your shared folder on your computer. It’s not the best solution, but it’s a fair compromise, I guess. It works for those of our team members who are better at working computers and programs, but it’s confusing to those who aren’t.
Under that, you’ve got your Direct messages. So, if you want to discuss things and don’t need to bother everyone–like your husband while he’s at work–this is the place to have those discussions.
It DOES allow for App integrations, but they’re light and don’t integrate as well as I’d hoped. If you look at the screenshot up at the top, far left corner, you’ll see that I have two sessions currently. Those are my teams. So, you can set up multiple teams and you can switch between them quite easily, even on your phone. And this is the clincher for me. That right there is helping me immensely. I can’t even tell you.
So, I think I’m going to be transferring some of my other projects over here. I have another co-author project, and repeat customers who might benefit from having discussions with one another as well as myself. So, Slack has been a very beneficial tool for the chaotic world of the Real Indie Author.
Update May 18, 2020: The great thing about technology is that it can help. A lot.
The bad thing is that it’s one more thing to learn and authors–especially indie authors–are on a constant stream of overwhelm.
A lot of authors would rather say, “That’s something new? No. I’m sticking with Facebook where I know I’m going to lose all the hours I keep complaining I need.” Why? Because it’s what they know.
I challenge you to find a program that will help you manage your time better, learn it, and then use it.
I ended giving up on Slack because my authors–my teammates–refused to learn it. Great tool. Waste of time because no one else was willing to try it.
