Ask HN: How would you improve collaboration tools?
I think the #1 problem is too many tools.<p>For instance,  I have collaborated with people using Skype, Discord, WebEx, Slack, IRC, Facebook Messenger,  Microsoft Lync,  icq,  AOL Instant Messenger,  Paltalk,  Tivejo,  Go To Meeting,  etc.<p>People will tell you horror stories about all of those things,  but I have found them all to be adequate.  Often people conflate problems with their audio and network with problems in the tools.  It also seems that these tools have made little technical progress over the years,  I mean, Facebook Messenger doesn&#x27;t seem very different from AOL Instant Messenger.<p>Having them all installed at once is a problem though because most of them want to live in the tray and will cause slowdowns and distractions while logging in.  Today many of them are written with Electron and other cross-platform toolkits that many think are bloated for apps they use all the time,  but it is insane to have five of them running in the tray.<p>Same is true for other kinds of collaboration tools,  say case management&#x2F;issue tracking.  For instance,  a customer of my customer submits a trouble ticket to my customer,  I have my own ticket system (so I have visibility into my workload,  history,  etc.) and then I find the problem is because of one of my suppliers,  so I have to make a ticket in their system.  At least one of those systems is going to have a system with a login procedure like<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bing.com&#x2F;videos&#x2F;search?q=get+smart+intro&amp;view=detail&amp;mid=BA8581A61ABB5C69B7F9BA8581A61ABB5C69B7F9&amp;FORM=VIRE" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bing.com&#x2F;videos&#x2F;search?q=get+smart+intro&amp;view=de...</a><p>and take 45 seconds to load the page for creating a ticket.<p>At some point people give up on having it work right and just accept the problems.  If you want to be a world-class remote,  you can&#x27;t do that.