
Show HN: Jackfruit – Add an always-on video hangout to your Slack channel - drpancake
https://jackfruit.live/
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cj
Our company is fully remote. We have an always-on Google Hangout that everyone
is on all day.

The key for this to work is that everyone has their mic + camera turned off
except when we have a scheduled meeting (ie. standups, team meetings).

Throughout the day, people often pop in the hangout by unmuting themselves to
ask the team a quick question, which also works great. In practice, this
doesn't cause very many interruptions because people know to ping someone 1-1
if they have a question meant for a specific person rather than the whole
team.

Even on days when everyone's mic + camera is muted all day except for standup,
it's still effective at creating the feeling that you aren't sitting there
working alone (I guess it acts as a reminder that you really do have teammates
working alongside you, albeit virtually).

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xfitm3
I enjoy remote work because I want to feel alone – I can't help but think
preferences like this alienate some of your employees. Like me, if I worked
with you.

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CathedralBorrow
What level of human communication would be non-alienating for you?

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dbingham
Slack with access to video calls at need.

I've worked remotely for over 8 years at 3 different companies. Two have had
some variation of this (Hipchat/Slack + Google Hangout / GoToMeeting or Slack
calls) and it works great. We have a daily standup meeting on video and then
we can jump on a video call through out the day if we find a need for it.

Otherwise, I have clear focus through out the day - I can choose whether to
respond to slack notifications or turn them off and work through them later.

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xfitm3
This feels like a nightmare to me. If I am thinking and in concentration - all
external stimulation needs to be shut off.

~~~
drpancake
Founder here - yes I can appreciate that. I'm a fan of deep work. I've found
that most teams jump in-and-out of rooms during the day and the original idea
of hanging out together while you work hasn't really materialised.

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drpancake
Author here. The original inspiration for this came from working remotely for
7 years and feeling occasionally lonely and isolated. I wanted to create a
frictionless, always-on video room for your team to hang out in while you
work. But I've found that so far most teams use it for stand-ups.

Feedback is much appreciated!

~~~
juandazapata
We used an always-on-video solution (the now dead Sqwiggle) in a past startup.
It all went relatively well until one day, the wife of one of your coworkers,
walked naked in the background. His webcam/laptop froze at that moment and a
picture of his naked wife stayed up for about 5 mins.

That was the last time we used that app. Just something to take into account.

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shantly
Always-on video staring at people's faces is weird in the best circumstances.
It's a bizarre view to have passively, rather than during active conversation.

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t34543
I think it’s creepy.

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isatty
Great job on building something but man I’d hate it if employers actually
demanded always on video, even for calls. Slack is pretty intrusive as is.

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xfitm3
Slack is extremely intrusive, doesn't obey DnD and forces favicon updates.

~~~
thoughtpalette
I've been using [https://muzzleapp.com/](https://muzzleapp.com/) on Mac.

Not affiliated, just a happy user.

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ilikehurdles
I like this idea. Discord has it for audio. Our fully-remote company pretty
much uses zoom in a somewhat similar way. "Always-on" doesn't have to mean
everyone is always in the room, it's simply an analogue of a physical meeting
room or even an IRC channel directory. You can see who is currently in it and
what the topic is (if there is one), and choose to hop in. That said, I would
probably disable audio and video if I'm idling in a room I'm interested in
until someone joins and starts talking.

It's a video meeting channel directory. I think a lot of comments are focused
exclusively on the "always-on" wording, which I feel misses the point.

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ecmascript
Pretty cool, but terrifying. I would be in constant stress and probably resign
the day after if I was required to join an alway-on call.

I work remotely.

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cpr
@drpancake -- aren't you nervous about Slack doing something just like this?
They seem to own all the technology required.

~~~
drpancake
Not too much. Slack has built-in video calling features already and what I'm
doing is outside of their core focus. But it's a possibility.

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awillen
We tried various iterations of this when I was a PM a Blue Jeans (enterprise
video conferencing company). We always called it the virtual water cooler - a
place where people on distributed teams could just pop in and ask
questions/chat as people in the office do at the water cooler.

Lots of customers showed interest, but nobody ended up actually using it.
Video conferences always ended up being scheduled ahead of time (i.e.
meetings) or escalated (more like this use case - starting a Slack chat and
turning into a call because that was easier for the topic at hand), and this
occupied a sort of weird middle ground between the two.

I still love the idea, and I hope you can make it work, but I suspect that
it's really only ever going to be practical for a small subset of distributed
teams that have just the right culture for it (and I don't know exactly what
that culture is).

~~~
drpancake
This is interesting, thanks. I'm seeing the same behaviour here - very few
teams use it to hang out while they work, they're typically using to jump on
ad-hoc video/audio calls or screen share.

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gxespino
Pretty slick implementation. Was also wary about the always on video rooms but
it seems they’re opt in for the most part.

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coldcode
I have zero desire to shove my face into other people's existence remotely. If
I want to see people or be seen I work at the office. I turn off video in our
conferencing software and I absolutely despise people who blast their face
into a 27in display sized window, and then decide to eat snacks the whole
time.

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giancarlostoro
Not to take away from the efforts of the developer but this basically turns
Slack into Discord. Which I think would be interesting. I think always open
audio channels are useful because anybody can just join and you can code and
talk whilst doing so.

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drpancake
Discord was certainly an inspiration here, as well as the now-defunct
Sqwiggle. I'm seeing some teams using it like that, but most of them like to
jump in-and-out of the room during the day as needed.

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sergiotapia
Congrats on launch, but I would never use this or force the engineers on my
team to use this.

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cyberpanther
On chrome os screen sharing button is disabled even though it's still chrome.

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drpancake
Sorry about that. Could you let me know the OS and browser versions you're on?

