How tools determine behaviour–Slack vs Message Board in Basecamp

How tools determine behaviour–Slack vs Message Board in Basecamp

I'm starting to love writing.

I'm not talking about daily journaling, though I now like it too. I'm talking about writing as a thought process.

We've been practising writing with Kirill for the purpose of thinking since we moved to Basecamp. It has a Message Board, which looks like an old-fashioned forum. There are topics that any person from the team can start, and other people can comment on these topics.

In our case, a topic dedicated to some specific idea we want to discuss. Kirill can start a topic, put a mix of ideas and questions, and leave it there for me to read and think. I then will write a thoughtful and profound reply giving my opinion, answering Kirill's and asking new questions.

To write a thoughtful response, I usually need to do some research. This way, the reply (a) takes some meaningful time, (b) becomes a valuable piece that drives our thought process and conversation further on.

Why didn't we do this in Slack?

Slack has a different atmosphere. Everything there is temporary. I don't want to invest my time in something that will be gone in a couple of days because we created 100 new messages.

In contrast, the Message Board in Basecamp is something persistent. We could refer to our conversations in the future and benefit from them if they are written thoughtfully. That makes us take these writings seriously.

I still find it hard to believe, but just by using the new tool, we have already discovered some interesting insights into topics we are now thinking deeply about. This is very exciting.

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