Splunk senior vice president of product Rob Seaman spoke with iTWire saying 66% of knowledge workers are now in some form of flexible arrangement. “Digital infrastructure has taken priority over the office, and digital infrastructure is what has helped us cope in this time and stay productive,” he said.

"Slack is focused on building the first true digital-first alternative,” Seaman said. And that’s what Slack has been doing; in 2020 it introduced Slack Connect to break down silos, and in 2021 it introduced Huddles - a lightweight, audio-first way of connecting. “It is the fasted-adopted feature in Slack’s history,” Seaman said. “Millions of people use it every week.”

Slack also introduced Clips, a way to record audio, video, and screen shares and share them asynchronously by posting them to a channel or direct message. Viewers can consume it when they want, at a speed they want, and because the text is transcribed it is also readable and searchable. In some cases, Clips has replaced the daily standup. “We see 1.2 million minutes of Clips watched weekly,” Seaman said.

Interestingly, Slack's data shows the median time of a Slack Huddle is 10 minutes. “People will make meetings go for as long as it is scheduled for,” Seaman notes, “so Huddles theoretically save 20 minutes on meetings.”

With this uptake and effect of Huddles, it's no surprise customers asked Slack for ways of working more deeply using it. Slack has delivered, today announcing the product remains an audio-first, lightweight feature - but now offers ways to share video, for multiple people to screen share at the same time, with facilities to draw on the screen and see cursors for emphasis, all augmented by a relaxed and playful vibe through backgrounds, stickers, emojis, and reaction effects.

What's more, "a cool thing people desperately needed is a durable thread where the notes and files will all be saved back to the DM or channel where the Huddle was initially created from,” Seaman said.

You can also pop out the window from Slack for full multitasking.

The coworking space in Slack Huddles will be available to all teams later in 2022.

In other news, Slack has also announced GovSlack general availability from July 2022 in the United States, supporting key public sector compliance and security requirements, and providing secure collaboration with external partners.

See Slack Huddles in action for yourself here: