Teleworking has prompted us to explore different solutions that aim to facilitate activities in virtual environments. These days taking notes, reminders, meetings, presentations, interviews, and interactions are almost all done through the screen. This transformation from face-to-face to digital has allowed us to discover interesting organization and collaboration tools that facilitate job performance.
To go deeper into this topic, we spoke with William Peña, a Venezuelan journalist specialized in telecommunications and ICTs, strategy consultant, and host of the radio program “Tecnofinanzas”. William told us in detail about the benefits of some tools that are currently changing the world. If you are interested in more information about technology, you can follow him on Twitter: @williampm.
What do you think have been the positive contributions of Slack for people who are telecommuting?
One of the great benefits of Slack is its ability to integrate more than 1,500 applications and tools that allow workers to incorporate them into their teams and create channels that make their work easier. From the simple sending of an internal email -which you can even edit- to the creation of channels to talk about specific topics and the possibility of sharing different files.
This is a platform that greatly helps organizations that have teams made up of several members. For example, in marketing companies where there is a creative team, integrated by a group of people, this tool is essential because it helps them interact more easily than if they had to send information by Gmail or corporate mail. Here they can create the team, include the members, open the channels and start working.
Regarding the creation of channels, it’s possible to combine teams depending on the objectives to achieve greater interaction and more agility from the point of view of effectiveness at work. Slack has become a kind of virtual office to work in a much more dynamic way.
According to data from Slack itself, they currently have more than 10 million users in the world. In my opinion, one of the great strengths of the platform is integration. That possibility of adding applications to those channels created to share key information within those spaces and through private channels, in case you need to talk directly with a person. You can also create alerts or send a message to the whole group if they need to pay attention to a specific document.
It’s a platform that requires exploration to be able to take great advantage of it, and it’s being widely used in digital marketing, public relations, and services companies.
What features do you think this tool provides that many people may not know about?
Slack is packed with features and is constantly working to create new ones to suit user needs. Below I am going to point out some of the most common:
- The use of underscores and descriptions to differentiate each of the channels.
- The use of stars or pins -which are in the toolbar that appears when hovering the cursor over a message- allows bringing to light objectives or things that are considered important.
- The ability to skip direct messages (DM) using keyboard combinations for both Mac and PC.
- Set reminders for messages you need to reply to.
- Direct communication with the teams linking with the @ and username of the person you want to contact.
- Private communication to connect particularly with a member of the team.
- Possibility of creating subtopics to better organize workspaces.
- Creating threads to help users better understand a situation.
- Slack integration with over 1500 tools.
- Integration with email and calendars.
- Sending messages to other non-Slack users.
- Copy messages to other channels using the Reacji application.
- Editing sent messages.
- Creation of Emojis and possibility to add Avatars.
What other digital communication tools do you consider to be key in this teleworking context?
If you are looking for collaboration tools, from a business point of view, you have Cisco solutions and Microsoft Teams solutions that are the market leaders. While, if you are looking for solutions that have to do with conferences in the corporate environment, there is Pexip, which is a super interesting videoconferencing and messaging integration tool, Zoom and a platform that is being used a lot in the audio environment, under Open Source, which is called Jitsi.
In my opinion, Pexip is a world visionary that is even above Zoom, which, without a doubt, has obtained a very important success during the pandemic because of its media coverage and because of its free version. On the other hand, it cannot be ignored what Salesforce is doing, which has a very valuable messaging and integration platform from a communication point of view because it allows you to adapt a large number of important applications for the corporate environment. As for Social Media, tools such as Hootsuite, Sociagest, among others, are being widely used for the handling and programming of social networks.
What do you think will be the progress in digital communication that will be seen in 2021?
I believe that this year there will be a transformation from the point of view of how the communication issue is going to evolve, both in terms of solutions and users. I think there is going to be a kind of death of some platforms and the growth of others because companies and providers are understanding, a little more, the users’ needs.
For example, one market that could be exploited is videoconferencing solutions. I think that Zoom is going to have to improve the security and bandwidth use issue. In the case of Microsoft Teams, I think they will have to be more interoperable with other types of platforms.
I also think that there’s going to be a very important integration issue and we’ll see important purchases. A big company will realize that a small one is growing a lot and will end up buying it. Then, new business opportunities will rise up for those who are currently starting and who have solutions that are still small but that are helpful and effective for the corporate environment.
In terms of user content, I think we are going to migrate to voice tools and that the growth of podcasts will continue. In addition, I believe that we must be aware of the evolution of the Clubhouse tool that was launched in June 2020 and that already has more than a million followers because, although it’s still a closed platform that is in beta, it’s becoming a great solution -a type of virtual roundtable- that is allowing many people to create meeting rooms to talk about specific topics and that is opening new opportunities in the audio field. Let’s remember that, in audio, we still don’t have solutions that are effective.
I believe that in the coming years, everything will depend a lot on the voice, and that will bring new job opportunities for all the people who are engaged in analysis, audience behavior or values because that audio data will have to de developed in order to be translated into a text, chart the data and make it more effective. Business opportunities will open up for everyone and, of course, for users in social environments such as business and corporate. There is going to be an interesting world to exploit there.
What are the privacy and security mechanisms of these types of tools?
From a privacy point of view, I think that on all platforms you have to seek maximum protection. I feel that in the case of us as users, the two-step verification has to be applied to everything. Similarly, if you use virtual private networks, you need to have passwords that are very strong.
On the other hand, at home, you have to build a defense system through a router and devices that are safe, avoid buying electronic items of uncertain origin, purchase products that come with security guidelines, with privacy controls, and linked to organizations that carry out cyber defense studies. Remember that, in digital environments, we are all vulnerable.
What advice would you give to people who still feel resistant towards these new forms of digital communication?
My advice is that they have to adapt, transform, evolve and start using new tools because we are facing a reality that is changing the world. As a consequence of the quarantine due to the pandemic, we realized that a large number of things that we thought were the ones that had to be done, no longer work. It has been shown that people are more productive working in environments such as their homes or in virtual offices.
I invite you to try Trello, Slack, and any technology solution that falls into your hands and then try to adapt it to your work environment. It’s important to stop resistance and adapt to change. Also remember that, in today's world, it’s important to be present in social networks because we are all equal through the screen.
