Now that everyone is working remotely, it's much harder to get to know your teammates. I built https://gettoknowapp.com as a Slack bot extension that sends you 1 question every M/W/F and posts it to a dedicated #answers channel. The whole app is contained within Slack - you can view people's past answers, upvote/like them, and the real fun is just seeing what your friends/coworkers had to say that you didn't expect about their answers.
I had used apps like Donut before and they felt oddly pushy and impersonal; you join a room and Donut will randomly select people to chat. Have you ever been in one of those arrangements? Extremely awkward openers. I wanted the questions to serve as a fun icebreaker to help people naturally discover interests together.
Oh and of course the tech. It's all built on Elixir. I run one web server and one database server and that's it. I already have about 100 communities spanning about 4000 people so in terms of message/event processing it is completely seamless...one of my favorite things about Elixir. Most interactions are processed in measure of microseconds rather than milliseconds. This makes for a real-time experience in Slack and is such a joy to work with. I also contribute to the Elixir-Slack open source project which has been fun working with as well.
I hope to incorporate more user feedback as it grows but so far it's been a great tool for teams in lockdown as they ramp up new people and want to quickly build them into their teams' culture.
I had used apps like Donut before and they felt oddly pushy and impersonal; you join a room and Donut will randomly select people to chat. Have you ever been in one of those arrangements? Extremely awkward openers. I wanted the questions to serve as a fun icebreaker to help people naturally discover interests together.
Oh and of course the tech. It's all built on Elixir. I run one web server and one database server and that's it. I already have about 100 communities spanning about 4000 people so in terms of message/event processing it is completely seamless...one of my favorite things about Elixir. Most interactions are processed in measure of microseconds rather than milliseconds. This makes for a real-time experience in Slack and is such a joy to work with. I also contribute to the Elixir-Slack open source project which has been fun working with as well.
I hope to incorporate more user feedback as it grows but so far it's been a great tool for teams in lockdown as they ramp up new people and want to quickly build them into their teams' culture.