

Lessons learned from running our distributed team over HipChat - rrwhite
http://www.uservoice.com/blog/founders/how-we-use-hipchat/

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JoeAltmaier
It sounds like a great tool, but I'm curious about the all the social rules
they're trying to enforce. Who can be in what rooms; cliques; what you can say
where.

In my experience using other tools, these things work themselves out when you
can see/hear the other people. Regular social intercourse has mechanisms for
dealing with the run-on talker, the snide remark, breaking up chat-fests ets.

{ disclaimer: I now work for Sococo }

With audio at least, you can use tone of voice, a cleared throat, a group
Ewwww! etc. to turn discussion back to work topics. Add video and you can tell
advanced presence info, attention vs distraction.

We've been testing video lately and its a game-changer in group meetings. Even
just the thumbnail adds so many cues about where a speaker is going, what's
toung-in-cheek and what's serious etc.

And chat is still there as a 'back-channel' for side topics, either in the
meeting room or person-to-person as needed, while you continue to monitor the
discussion via voice.

Voice and video totally speeds up group test sessions, document walkthroughs,
bug descriptions by taking the delay out of dialog. A picture may be worth a
thousand words, but a word and a look is worth a hundred chats.

I wouldn't consider returning to a chat tool for group dynamics, after using
Teamspace. I'm addicted to the speed of exchange it allows, the advanced
presence info over anything chat can provide, doc sharing and shared browsing
etc.

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Charlesmigli
The chat room is the perfect tool for organizing the team communication. It
completely change the way you interact with your teammates. Asynchronous
communication is powerful and should be done the right way (not emails for
saying we are having lunch!!). We use HipChat too (and Trello). We were so
convinced that working with the right tools and the right workflow was
indispensable that we wrote a book showcasing the needs we had as a team and
the tools we used to fulfill these needs <http://leanpub.com/startupflow>.

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senko
All of the points apply equally well to IRC or any other groupchat you may
want to use (satisfied paying HipChat customer here, just sayin').

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rrwhite
We used Campfire previously and there were a lot of things we couldn't do (1:1
chats, ad-hoc rooms, etc). So while in general I'd agree there are a lot of
things which only worked once we moved to HipChat.

~~~
malandrew
I have a bunch of complaints about Campfire that I wonder if are solved in hip
chat (or another service)

\-- Noise in the logs such as join/leave notifications. This makes reading old
logs a pain in the ass \-- Pull activity, by which I mean sending messages in
campfire, but having them catch the attention of the person who isn't around.
Something like @username notifications that let the user know you've mentioned
them. Allow them to reply to the notification email, but have it appear in the
chat window. \-- Ability to clean up logs and match noise conversation as
hidden by default so it's easier for people to go back and read over the logs.

1:1 chats sounds great, especially if they send notifications to the person
when they aren't around.

