Ross Mayfield
CEO and co-founder of Pingpad, making social productivity as instant, simple and social as messaging. Previously VP at SlideShare (acquired by LinkedIn), Co-Founder, CEO at Socialtext (the enterprise social software pioneer) and RateXchange (a B2B bandwidth exchange)
Introduction to TeamOps
TeamOps is the combination of practices, apps and cultural philosophies, prompted by the shift to group messaging like Slack beyond software developers.
Shifting to Slack Requires New Practices and Re-tooling
The biggest change in enterprise collaboration is the shift to group messaging. Like all meaningful change in enterprise applications (PCs, spreadsheets, LANs, email, IM, Social), this began in the consumer sphere and entered the enterprise from the bottom-up. This time it was mobile group messaging apps like WhatsApp. Slack had amazing timing to meet this […]
Knowledge Management Systems and the Rise of Slack
Knowledge Management Systems and the Rise of Slack This is the third phase of knowledge management. It happens as a by-product of getting work done, so people know what they are doing. Photo by Dmitri Popov on Unsplash In the late 90s there was a Knowledge Management bubble. KM was at the forefront of what we now […]
Rishi, Slack can be right for you. You just need the right tools and practices to focus your work.
Although Slack is positioned as a productivity tool, it becomes counterproductive when misused. Instant messaging applications enable communication that is online, synchronous and on-demand. This tends to be appropriate for interrupt-driven teams like those in customer service and sales. However, project-oriented teams tend to suffer from inundation. As a software developer in product development, I […]
Focus is the Startup Advantage
Photo by Stefan Cosma on Unsplash The single greatest competitive advantage a startup has is it’s focus. It’s what you must do. It’s how you can survive and advance. It’s where you find differentiation. It’s why you can slay big dragons. Here’s some key considerations for finding your Startup Focus and putting it to work. The […]
Slack and Pingpad gives you Tasks and Decisions like Atlassian Stride, and more
The enterprise messaging war is well underway. First Slack and Atlassian Hipchat battled it out, with Slack reaching escape velocity. Then came major entrants Microsoft Teams, Cisco Spark and Facebook Workplace. My bet is Slack will continue it’s unprecedented growth, grow it’s ecosystem and be favored by best-of-breed shops for text, voice and video conversations. […]
Practices for Effective Distributed Teams
Alignment isn’t a wing formation (photo credit iStock by Getty Images) I’ve worked with distributed teams with my last three startups. I find that with the right practices distributed teams can be more efficient and effective, so long as you over-invest in certain things to make up for distance. To share best practices, I’d like to […]
Content Marketing Isn’t Marketing Content
Here’s a summary of a short talk on Content Marketing I gave at Demandfest, a practitioner-to-practitioner event for marketers. In today’s SaaS market, one thing stands out, nothing. There is too much noise. Standing out and engaging customers is harder than ever. And there are too many spammy approaches that hurt the brand and drain […]
What I’m doing about the Tech Backlash
This week I posted The Coming Tech Backlash, on how my industry is due for a reckoning with the job destruction caused by automation. The article struck a big chord. A question to ask is: what can I do about it? As a small startup founding CEO, here’s my answer. I signed an entrepreneur pledge […]
The Coming Tech Backlash
Tech innovation is killing jobs, not foreign scapegoats, and revolt after Trump will be Luddite The tech industry played an influential role in the outcome of the US Presidential election. Not just in providing the medium for Fake News and propaganda. The root cause is job destruction by Automation — that drove a base of dissatisfied […]
