Communication on The Dangling Pointer

Being mindful during video calls

Thu, 24 Jan 2019 01:50:41 +0000

Working remote means I'm on a lot of video calls. I've come up with a bunch of little tweaks to help with attentiveness and mindfulness during the call. It is important to show you're listening.

Look at the camera often

When you're in person you look at people's eyes to show them you're listening. Doing that on a video call requires a bit of counter-intuitive body language by looking at the camera. You won't be looking at the person but they'll see you looking directly at them. It's a subtle difference but I've found it highly effective.

The Slack Channel Effect

Thu, 08 Dec 2016 02:28:00 +0000

Instead of talking in a big group we split off into separate channels which is somewhat anti-collaboration.

I realized the other day that channels in Slack (or any other group messaging platform) are both good and bad. When there are a small number of rooms it's easier to find a conversation or to be involved in the majority of discussions. As the number of people in the rooms grows, chats become more noisy. The solution is to create another channel - ideally something subject-specific to filter out the noise. There's a counter-effect which is somewhat unexpected - it can reduce interaction between members.

E-mail Notifications Aren't Always Useful

Fri, 26 Aug 2016 17:15:54 +0000

https://www.flickr.com/photos/restlessglobetrotter/2660204217

Notifications are an essential part of most computer systems. Operations happen asynchronously and users who care about the completion of them need to be notified somehow. In most cases e-mail is the primary way someone is notified. E-mail has been around forever and it's easy to address a message to a specific user or a group of users. Most programming frameworks also include the ability to e-mail.

I hate e-mail notifications. Okay; so hate is a powerful word. I severely dislike e-mail notifications.

Apple's Public Mailing Lists

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 15:00:21 +0000

You may not be aware but Apple has a pretty extensive set of public e-mail discussion lists.

https://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo

There are topics ranging from fundamental Objective-C issues through to development for their various desktop applications. Some of the lists are quite chatty but you can subscribe in digest format to get a daily e-mail instead of each individual message. This is a great way to reach engineers working on the piece you're interested in and is a quite interesting place to lurk.