Gettting Started with Socialcast – a New Engineer's Point of View

As a new member of the engineering staff, I was eager to start contributing to the application and learning about my coworkers. The Socialcast team includes employees in Irvine, CA, San Diego, CA, and Minneapolis, MN. The team uses its own product to stay in touch, and despite the distance, team members generally know what everyone is working on. I was invited to the employee community and started reading right away. When away from my desk or traveling, the iPhone web application helps me stay connected to what is going on. Several team members share their Twitter statuses or Flickr photos with Socialcast, some use the Gmail Gadget, and some use the bookmarklet. Frequent communication from within the application or through users’ Web Feeds helps keep the whole team synchronized.

At previous companies I’ve worked for, interacting with remote team members was generally limited to email. It is difficult to learn about someone’s personality through email, and there usually is no rhythm of sharing. Email messages are specific and generally sent from one individual to another. Email has more problems, messages get lost, buried in inboxes, or importance can be misunderstood. In the Socialcast employee community, team members establish their interests by sharing things and interacting with the things others share. Shared items are available to everyone and searchable. At one company I worked for, new employees were greeted with an Inbox loaded with emails. Some were from managers, some were for meetings that already happened, announcements, social events—it was difficult to start contributing. If employees didn’t delete these immediately (some did), the messages were soon buried by newer ones (but not necessarily more important ones). In Socialcast, old messages get moved to the top of everyone’s Activity Stream when they are interacted with. This helps ensure team members are seeing relevant information in a timely fashion.

Socialcast provides a way for employees to hear and to be heard. By reading updates, I know which coworkers can help me out, whether it be for search engine tuning, or for brewing my own beer! I’m enjoying learning about and sharing things with my coworkers. I’d love to hear about your experience with Socialcast, and how we can make it even better!