Video creation to communicate status in some cases! That would take more time to consume than text. Times the number of people consuming.
But standup is in Slack.
It seems like there's something unspoken here (pun intended). What are the organizational reasons for the different modes? Are some kinds of communication discouraged, thus forced to be in recorded videos?
Video has some pros (extra visual context, more engaging, more human) and cons (longer to consume, harder to search, typically creates double work having to record + document textually). Each company will likely view mediums slightly differently.
There's plenty of videos, but the really cool thing is that basically everything has a transcript, or meeting notes, or an agenda. And I think this hits a really nice middle ground that works for different types of people.
Personally I am very fast at reading/writing, and I focus better and understand better when reading, so I skip most of the videos and calls and just read them instead. But for some people they really enjoy the video side of things, and that's cool too. Most of our meetings/calls are optional and it works well to cater to both types of people. Our source of truth is ultimately what's written down (i.e. in an issue) and how we get to that point is flexible.
I think a good middle ground here is audio, with transcriptions.
I'm making a chat application for this called heysync, which is similar to slack or IRC, but with embeddable auto-transcribed audio messages as a primary feature. You can type messages out as normal, or send audio, and people on your team can scan/read it, and decide to listen, or listen by default. It's more human than text, way less stressful than sync video meetings, and enables asynchronous conversations over several days or across timezones.
I'm nearly done building a first version, so if anyone would like to hear more or try it soon, there's a website and mailing list signup at: https://heysync.chat
Thanks for asking -- we've played around with it a bit! Mostly as tests as features get implemented, e.g. live-playing incoming audio, or playing forward through multiple messages at a time, but it's kind of addictive so we've ended up just chatting sometimes too.
Heysync definitely shares concepts with iMessage's audio snippets (or WhatsApp's, Signal's, etc.), but automatic transcriptions let you decide to read or listen at will.
It's also different in that it's got features similar to IRC or a slack-like, so channels and DMs, markdown and code highlighting support, and soon enough reactions, threads, bots, etc. Beyond that, I'm also working on adding built-in support for "structured" meetings, like daily standups, because that seems to be a major use case.
But standup is in Slack.
It seems like there's something unspoken here (pun intended). What are the organizational reasons for the different modes? Are some kinds of communication discouraged, thus forced to be in recorded videos?