Kevin Milden left a comment at Signal vs. Noise talking about how much New Leaders, his team of designers and developers, enjoys Campfire.
Campfire is 37Signals’ best product ever...If you are going to build web based applications Campfire is essential.
We got in touch with Kevin to learn more about New Leaders and how they use Campfire. Read on for more details and to learn some great Campfire tips.
37signals: What is New Leaders and why do you need Campfire?
Kevin: New Leaders is a team of designers and developers working all over the country focused on building high quality, Rails-based web applications for our customers. Talent knows no boundaries — we have team members that work from many different places and Campfire allows everyone to communicate on a regular basis. It acts as our virtual office and provides a centralized place for us to talk and make sure everything is on track.
How do you use Campfire?
I think we use Campfire to it's fullest capabilities. We share screenshots, design concepts, code snippets, and anything that is happening day to day. If one of our team members is not on Campfire it gives us the indication that they are either busy or prefer not to be disturbed. We don't require a status message letting us know you are away we just make the assumption based on how people use it.
When we have a virtual meeting with a customer we'll usually invite them to a campfire seesion while on the phone and share screen shots and URLs. We tried other tools for sharing visual information with clients but have never been happy with web-screen sharing services like Webex. Since there are no java applets or bandwidth issues, and the only requirement is a modern web browser, we are positive that Campfire will work 100% of the time.
What's better about Campfire than other options (IM, etc.)?
1. Web-based — no software, no versions, no bandwidth issues.
2. Group centric — People can jump in and out, no need to approve their inclusion or give people 'presenter' status to share
3. Code Parsing — Campfire can tell when we pasted something so it will break our code snippets our into pastes. Very helpful.
4. Screenshots — We can add an image of anything in-line of the current conversation and get feedback from the entire team. No need for emails or phone calls.
5. Transcripts & File Management — This is the killer feature. Most clients store your conversation transcripts locally and the files end up on your desktop. With campfire everything stays within the application allowing us to find what we need even if from 6 months ago. Unlike IRC, you can read the backlog to an ongoing discussion as soon as you join the room, don't need to keep the session open to record transcripts.
Any tips or tricks for other Campfire customers?
1. the "//km" command will quickly tag a message "Kevin Milden" without the need to type it in. Very useful if directing a message to another user while several people are communicating.
2. Use a terminal command to place your screen grabs into a folder rather than your desktop. This will allow you to set the "Browse for File" input to bet set at that folder. Simply take a screen shot, browse to that folder, attach the file at the top of the list and the screen shot is shared. Once you get it down you can do it in under 3 seconds.
3. Topics can be fun. Use the orange bar as a status message or a way to indicate something that recently occurred. For example — "Client Payment Received" or "Apple announces new product"
4. Tagging — Since we can basically place any file into basecamp. We like to use it as an archive for different things. Things that you want to share but would be inappropriate to place into a basecamp project. We we will add tags like — CLIENT NAME, ARCHIVE or BOOKMARK next to posts we think will be very later. Do a search and every post and file with the corresponding tag will show up.
5. We use Pyro to keep our campfire sessions separate from our browser, since we are often opening & closing windows or debugging across browsers. Pyro keeps us from continuously closing the campfire session while working.
Anything else?
We use Campfire so often and we had great success creating the Twitter iPhone client we have been dreaming about how we can get Campfire to work on our iphones. We use the phone for conference calls and having campfire on the phone at the same time would allow us to take a meeting anywhere, and communicate with other team members while out and about.
The New Leaders team.
Thanks for all the great info Kevin!
Do you use a 37signals product in an interesting or noteworthy way? Let us know.
