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  • Steve Dotto here. How the heck are you doing this fine day? Me? I’m a little bit anxious

  • that I’m going to do a good job on today’s demo because this is one of those apps that

  • I think if you really give it its due, it might be life-changing for you. But it’s

  • a little bit complex to understand and a lot of people say it’s just another thing when

  • really it’s another thing that eliminates a whole bunch of just another things. The

  • app that were going to be talking about today is Slack and I’m just going to give

  • you a quick background of why it’s so relevant for me.

  • My team is growing. I’ve got a virtual team now of three people in addition to myself

  • spread all over the world and as my team has grown, I’ve found that I’m getting stretched

  • to my limit communication-wise because each one of my team members likes to use a different

  • tool for communications. One of them loves to communicate with me on Facebook messenger.

  • Another loves to communicate with me in Skype Messenger, the instant messaging side of Skype.

  • One uses email. Actually, they all use email fairly well but the bottom line was that I

  • was getting stretched into all of these different places and beginning to lose cycles, beginning

  • to lose the amount of time to find something and I was worrying that I was going to miss

  • something important because I wasn’t looking in the right place for something that was

  • relevant. Along at the perfect time comes Slack in my

  • life. It’s been around for a little while and teams are really discovering that it works

  • for them. It’s this new phenomenon of a different type of information overload which

  • I’m calling, for lack of a better term, fractured communications, the fact were

  • using all of these different channels to communicate with and we can get lost between the channels.

  • Information can get lost and things can get off the rails. Slack gives us a unified communication

  • interface that allows us to all work in the same space and they make it worthwhile because

  • they give us a whole bunch of benefits if we commit to communicating in Slack itself.

  • You want to have a quick look? I think you should stick around because were looking

  • at Slack today on DottoTech. I have to apologize for the bit of a long

  • intro but Slack is a tool that takes a little bit of time to get your head around. Now I

  • mentioned to you the reason that I really like Slack and why Slack is working so well

  • for me. It allows me to bring together into one place all of the people who I need to

  • communicate with on my team and flow all of our communications into the one space. There’s

  • a mobile app which I’ll show you in just a few moments but right now I’m in the desktop

  • app. There’s also a web-based app that you can use so Slack allows you to access your

  • account from any tool that you happen to be on, be it your smartphone, your computer or

  • even using web access from somebody else’s system.

  • Now Slack divides itself into kind of two broad areas. The first area is your teams.

  • Now teams could be companies, they could be departments or they could be project-based.

  • The second thing we have are the channels. Channels allow us to be more granular with

  • information so we might have a marketing team for our company. Within that marketing team,

  • we might have an events channel, a promotions channel, channels set at that level or it

  • could be more granular and we could have a channel set for a single event. Were going

  • to Social Media Marketing World; here are all of the details and here’s all of the

  • conversation around that. Into each channels comes all of the different

  • accounts and the individuals can join into channels, which means theyll be flagged

  • in the conversations in the channels. You can also direct message back and forth and

  • communicate at any point with all of your team members, which is the main way that youre

  • going to be using Slack for the most part. It works like another instant messengering

  • application at that point. Now people always ask well, how is this different from email

  • or other instant messengers? It’s different than email because it’s very instant and

  • it’s very team-based so your information is not getting lost in the big email and there

  • isn’t as big a barrier to entry as far as opening your email, downloading your email,

  • opening it and then replying. It’s much instant messenger-y.

  • It’s not going to be for everybody. It doesn’t replace email completely. It reduces the amount

  • of email you do because most of your external communication with clients and prospecting,

  • those sorts of things are still going to go through email but with your team, your team

  • should have far fewer emails and you should have no more of those CYA emails where people

  • are copying you back and forth and youve got a huge email nested thread to read through

  • in order to find the relevant information. Slack completely eliminates that productivity

  • vampire. That alone probably makes it worth it for some of you to embrace Slack.

  • But it does more than that. It also gives us one place to store common files. Itll

  • allow us to integrate with tools like Google Drive and Dropbox but it also has its own

  • file management and file storage system. In the free version, you get up to 5 GB of space

  • per team so youve got quite a bit of space that you can store files. But you can also

  • integrate other corporate tools or other tools like Dropbox if you choose to so it’s really

  • how you decide to set up your own system. Communication happens just as you’d expect.

  • You can send information back and forth to people, saying hey, how it’s going all through

  • the instant messenger app site. You could have nice communication going back and forth,

  • all threaded and tagged together. If youre communicating in channels, everybody within

  • that channel will get the notification. You can also set up private groups. If youve

  • just been working on a small little thing or you want a private management group that’s

  • slightly separate, you can set them up as well. So it’s very flexible as far as how

  • you set it up. The way that you enroll different team members

  • and enroll people in Slack is you just invite them in. Send them an invite, they get it

  • by email then they sign up and then theyre brought in. the App itself is free and most

  • people I know are still using the free version of the app. Where you start to have to pay

  • is when your message archive that you want to be able to search is larger than 10,000

  • messages or when you need more of that 5 GB space per team for storage. There are a variety

  • of different entry points that you can go to the paid version.

  • I mentioned that 10,000 message limit. That’s one of the real strengths of Slack, the ability

  • to be able to search back on messages at any time. Far faster and far more efficient than

  • finding information in email or anything except, the possible exception in my mind, of Evernote.

  • The search is lightning fast and very accurate. So if you decide that it’s a tool youre

  • going to use ongoing in your business, then upgrading to that larger than 10,000 message

  • bucket that you can search because it’s very valuable because then you can search

  • back through your whole historical archive. Now you don’t have to worry. That’s not

  • something you have to make a decision on early on in your Slack career because it takes a

  • long time to reach that 10,000 messages and even if you wait beyond that to decide that

  • youre going to go for the paid tier, you only see the first 10,000 messages but the

  • others are still stored for you and available for later.

  • They use a fairly deep and good level of encryption as far as security goes so youre in very

  • good shape as far as all of that and it’s very flexible. You could set it up for multiple

  • teams. I’ve got it set up for my DottoTech team, for the four people that I work with.

  • We also have it set up here to support a course that were teaching on Slack. I’ll put

  • a notification of that at the end of this video. Were actually using Slack as a delivery

  • mechanism to teach it. We just launched this last week but we have some 40 or 50 students

  • already taking the course and each of the modules we set up as a channel. If you go

  • and look, you see the different media types. Here weve got a video available, which

  • is basically the introduction to the whole course running in YouTube that they can view

  • right within Slack. Isn’t that cool? And the integrations go way beyond that. I’m

  • going to have to do another demo showing the video conferencing integrations, how it works

  • with Dropbox and other tools, Evernote. It has got integrations with a large variety

  • of tools. Pretty much it’s kind of like Evernote in the fact that everybody wants

  • to get a piece of Slack so theyre all building their applications with Slack in mind. There’s

  • native integration already for tools like Trello, the task and to-do list manager, for

  • Wunderlist, Asana. Were seeing all of them coming down the pipe and finding ways to integrate

  • with this tool to make sure that they take advantage of Slack’s communications capabilities.

  • I promised I would show you the mobile app before were done and if I didn’t promise

  • you, I should have promised you because the mobile app is just as good as the desktop

  • app. Here it is. I’m launching it on my smartphone. They do a good job of kind of

  • working your way through the tools. Here if I swipe to the left, it brings up all of the

  • different settings. I can switch teams. I can only see one team at a time in the mobile

  • app but I can switch back and forth between the different teams just that easily. If I

  • swipe to the left, I’ve got all of my channels and I’ve got all of my teams and I’ve

  • got all of those communication tools available to me there as well. So you can see that the

  • mobile app really is identical to the desktop app in form and in function so all of your

  • training and all of your learning on one platform translates across into the other. Of course,

  • it’s iOS and Android and everything in between so it works on pretty much all of the different

  • mobile platforms as well except Blackberry. It doesn’t work on Blackberry. Sorry.

  • I could spend hours on Slack and I’m probably going to do a few more demos on Slack coming

  • down the pipe, especially if you let me know in the Comments area if you want to know more

  • about Slack, if this is a tool that you like and that you want to know more about. But

  • it’s one that I’m really excited about. It’s changing how I work and I can see the

  • benefit on a daily basis. I hope you found this video today to be useful.

  • Now there are three ways to stay in touch with us here on DottoTech. The first is subscribe

  • to this channel, the second subscribe to our newsletter and the third is DottoTech is a

  • community-funded site supported through our partners at Patreon. If you want to know about

  • the different perks involved in being a patron supporter, I encourage you to drop by our

  • website. And as a completely self-serving note before

  • were done, I’m going to put a link in to this page which is the description of our

  • Slack Made Easy course. If youve decided you like what you see of Slack here and you

  • want to learn more about using it, why not take a look at the course? You can be a member

  • of the group that I was just showing you. We basically use Slack to teach you how to

  • use Slack. It’s a $40 investment and you will learn how to use Slack quickly, effectively

  • and get you in and productive as quickly as possible. So well include the link in the

  • description field. That’s all the time we have for today’s show. I am Steve Dotto.

  • Until next time, have fun storming the castle.

Steve Dotto here. How the heck are you doing this fine day? Me? I’m a little bit anxious

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