Just a bunch of Slackers.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of speaking to a class of grad students about running a ‘virtual,’ distributed company.

It was a fascinating discussion about what goes on behind the scenes at Corevist – how we work and all the ways that’s evolved over the years. It’s something I spend a lot of time thinking about, but don’t often get a chance to discuss. So, it was a real treat for me to be able to have this conversation with a room full of really bright students.

They had a lot of questions about culture and communication. How have we figured out ‘the secret’ to running an efficient company with everyone working remotely? That one made me laugh, because there is no secret. We hire people who love what they do and work really hard at it. Oh, and we use Slack.

Slack is a relatively new business application (that was named Inc. Magazine’s Company of the Year for 2015). In case you haven’t heard of it yet, it’s a messaging system that organizes one-on-one and group messages into easily searchable channels, where we can share ideas, new information, and even files.

Slack has really revolutionized the way Corevist communicates internally. It quickly evolved beyond just a messaging system for us. It’s also becoming our resource library. It’s where we document decisions and new processes.

Slack means that we don’t have to dig through emails anymore. Instead, we have conversations through Slack Channels. That one simple change means that our day-to-day discussions and process decisions are now categorized, documented, and searchable.

As our team has grown, it’s become more and more difficult to make sure everyone is kept in the loop. Slack has given us a centralized place to store information and create a dialogue as we make important company decisions.

Slack is one of many tools we use to run a ‘virtual’ company. It just happens to be one of the cooler ones :)

About “Behind the Scenes”

As a fast-growing technology company, we’re faced with new opportunities and challenges almost every day. Our response to those events often creates interesting stories (certainly for us and we hope for you).

This series was created to capture and share a “backstage” look at the ways we’re working to scale the company, evolve our services, and respond to the demands of the marketplace. We hope that our customers, partners and friends find value in our efforts to be transparent.