IT Blog

The last 16 months will be forever associated with meetings that happen via Zoom. But the longer I’ve worked from home, the more I’ve preferred collaborating using audio-only Slack calls. When nobody’s performing for a camera, the actual topic of conversation comes to the fore. It usually feels more productive and less stressful than video. And hey, we’re all in Slack all day anyhow, so it’s one less place to manage.

“Call” is the right way to describe these audio sessions: You initiate one and listen to a ring-like sound until the other party picks up. It’s a useful feature, but it has a certain old-school feel to it.

Now Slack is introducing a twist on audio-based collaboration with a new feature, rolling out to paid customers, called Slack Huddles. Instead of mimicking the age-old idea of a phone call, a Huddle is a place where multiple people can come and go. Each Huddle is associated with a particular Slack channel or DM session and is particularly optimized for…