Been dying for something like this to come out since Sqwiggle's unfortunate demise. Tried it out, and we like it a bit more than Sqwiggle. Fast, and we haven't had any issues with quality.
@delcurrie@stefaniwhylie I couldn't agree more! There are privacy concerns that this sort of product will have to face head on - but I really hope the remote work community can start to see the benefits of this sort of thing. Seeing the faces of the other humans you work with is immeasurably helpful to feeling connected to your team mates. I'll try and give this a go (if my team lets me :P )
We tried Sqwiggle back in the day, but was tough to have my team excited about it. They felt like their privacy was a bit too invaded. Maybe this will be better though.
@trevorhatfield Yeah, for us the need to feel like we're sort of in the same place is more important than the privacy concerns. It sort of think of it as being in an office—it may just take some time for your team to remember that the camera is on since it's just there, in the background, not something you're actively paying attention to.
Sure someone can look at the Sneek window while you happen to be picking your nose, but I'd say there's a 70% chance no one would even notice; again, because you're not actively looking at the snaps. Also, manual (snaps.
Still early days, but we've been using it like this:
- send a Slack message to a team member, no response, check Sneek and notice they've stepped away (like popping your head up to see if someone is at their desk if you worked in the same office)
- random group vc, just kind of there, hanging out with the team. It was kind of amazing because we'd never do a Hangout to just hangout—we usually only do those for work. I feel like I've learned so much about these folks in such a short time. We're only ever in the same place about twice per year.
- you can actually tell when someone is having a bad day, so you can decide to hold off on bugging them about that TPS report they didn't get to
- when you need to work over the weekend, it's lonely, but it's not so bad if you can actually see your teammates working too
- the connection for video calls is quick, like really quick, and it's much much easier to do that than set up a Hangout in Slack, even with the integration. It's awesome!
@stefaniwhylie sounds like you've really got the hang of it! @trevorhatfield it's really about how you present it to your team. Sneek isn't to keep an eye on people, it's all about that human contact element and once people start to see the fun side of it, they really get into it.
We have a game we play "Yawn or Opera". People look like they're singing opera when you catch a snap of them yawning. So we send it to Slack with the tag #yawnoropera - we have some great ones!
@delcurrie do you guys plan on doing audio only, with the option to still share your screen? We ended up using ScreenHero this morning because we needed a mic only chat, so I think the option is still useful in some situations.
@stefaniwhylie we hadn't planned on the mic only option, we do allow for people with no webcam, so wouldn't be too hard to implement. We'll add it to the roadmap!
have wanted something like this forevs!! were piloting at qordoba as of yesterday. will let you know what we think! 22 people in 5 locations!
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I've used Portal but never stuck with it. I'm really liking this after just trying it out today. Cool stuff!
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This is neat! Will be giving it a try for sure...
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Been searching for this for months it seems. This app is the 'presence' holy grail for remote teams. It fills a huge ugly black hole left from Perch, Sqwiggle, et al and horrible apps like Sococo. Rock on guys!
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