OH: “If you want me to see something, email it - don’t put it in Teams.”
This is a third tier manager who’s manager also feels the same way. And we wonder why there isn’t uptake on modern communication systems…
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@donkey not *all* modern comms systems. Only the ones compromised by shitty US corporations.
@lightweight *grin* Unfortunately, this would be exactly the same no matter what non-email system was being used - RocketChat et al - the higher ups dont’ want anything but email which gives the rest of the organisation the leeway to do the same. Buy-in needs to be from the top otherwise everything ends up back in email again.
@donkey huh. Haven't come across that in any organisations I've been involved with. I suppose I'm just lucky.
@lightweight I've been involved in a couple of efforts to increase our departments' inter-team communication by using different tech platforms. And it comes down to trying to fix a social problem with a technical solution.
The *problem* is that people don't communicate because everyone's too busy putting out fires. (There'd be fewer fires if we communicated but that's not the point. Right now, there are fires to put out.)
New tech fails because we don't have time to learn or use it.
@zeborah @lightweight absolutely- time comes in to it as well. Like the whole email overload situation which some of the more chatty mediums help with.
But, yes, if we were appropriately resourced, it wouldn’t be as much of an issue!
@donkey @lightweight Yeah. Personally I'm happy to use Teams. I'm ever-hopeful that at some point I'll finally find the situation where it's more useful than our existing tools. I haven't yet, but you never know.
In the meantime though, if I'm having a busy day then... yeah, I'm going to forget to check Teams or the intranet or anything other than email. So if it's important and/or urgent, send it by email (or phone or IM or visit me). Otherwise you're trusting to luck...
@zeborah I'm deeply disappointed that anybody uses the MSFT technologies, mostly because a) they're low quality, and b) because their primary purpose is to preclude any other technologies, locking users into their monoculture. I cannot use MS Teams both on principle, & because MS hates Linux. NZ gov't needs to use #FOSS instead: as it's better, cheaper (by far!), & to regain sovereignty. Currently, NZ's sovereignty is forfeit: https://davelane.nz/mshostage
@zeborah the 'principle' issue is because of MSFT's long-term ethical lapses, and because their proprietary software creates an implicit power imbalance that subjugates us all. https://davelane.nz/proprietary @donkey
@lightweight Okay sure but for me it's nothing to do with any of that: we also tried Yammer pre-acquisition, and tried WordPress for an internal blog, and so on and so forth. We'd have the same problem with Slack or Mastodon or something I hand-coded to run off our own custom-built *nix box.
The problem ultimately isn't that we don't have the right tool, it's that we don't have the *time*. So the good-enough thing we're already using wins over the unfamiliar perfect tool every time.
@lightweight @zeborah @donkey Injecting myself into this conversation because it's interesting and also very complex.
Disclaimer: I've built a career around Microsoft technologies
FOSS solutions would indeed be the preferable tech stack for public sector services in most cases. What service providers like MSFT, AWS or Google offer is a coherent, closely integrated whole-of-business ecosystem with a better user experience than many FOSS alternatives.
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@paw I hope you don't mean "better end user experience", because IME the big tech companies' solutions are mired in inconsistencies. They tend to take some acquired (or skunkworks) technology, slap in a quick integration with existing customer tech, and roll it out as a "solution". The result is as unwieldy as it sounds to any dev with half a brain.
Then customers are lucky if they continue to support it long term.
@lightweight @zeborah @donkey
