I was surprised how well it worked. And while it felt a bit like our first experience with low-res online video chats, the shared intent of the space helped me stay focused.
I'm talking about the Flow Club.
What is Flow Club?
People interested in office rentals have worked hard to convince us that the workplace requires random collaboration on office water coolers. But what if not?
What if the random nature of such contact could be outsourced, anonymized and provided as an online service? What if the people you interact with could come from anywhere and if, in the absence of a managerial hierarchy, workers could be driven by their own desired goals and a bit of perceived peer pressure directed by outsiders?
This is what Flow Club aims to offer.
It is a members-only club launched on April 7 with the backing of Y Combinator and Worklife Ventures. In my brief experience, this is a strangely effective attempt at online coworking that takes a group of random strangers trying to get work done, lets them talk together briefly, and then shoves them (live on camera) into a virtual space to share background music as they try to focus on what they need to do.
It is part of a plethora of emerging technologies that aim to support new hybrid working models.
Emerging services like Webflow, TeamFlow, Archie, Pietra, LunchClub, Otter.ai, Boomerang, Bubbles, and many more are helping to manage the challenges people have begun to experience in our new, rapidly changing workplace.
The challenges of presence, communication, planning, networking, isolation, recognition and other business challenges that arose during the pandemic are being resolved. As things stand, the reactionary drive to force people back into the office will be exposed as irrelevant to, and likely counterproductive to, the needs, opportunities, and goals of our time.
So how effective is Flow Club and what problem is it trying to solve?
Using the flow club
In my experience, it was surprisingly effective. There's something strangely reassuring about putting on your best "I think" face in front of people you've never met who offer similar facial expressions. At the same time, it's also great to be able to do this in an anonymous environment, where the only shared experience is that everyone is using the same service and everyone is trying their best to get things done. .
You can meet in general sessions, or look for those that focus on a specific topic, or for people who work best at specific times.
Sessions work like this:
- You join a session.
- Introduce yourself and say what you are trying to do.
- The host talks to everyone, wishes them luck.
- The music continues and everyone gets to work.
And that's it: you're alone, working toward your goal while listening to music and acknowledging that at least for this moment ("flow") you're part of a small group of strangers who are trying to accomplish something in the same shared time. virtual space.
The idea is that the shared nature of the experience helps you stay focused, while the online nature of the service keeps you in control of your remote work environment. Also, being in front of the camera makes you feel responsible.
The sessions are timed and once they are over, the host invites everyone to share how well they achieved their goal and comment on the experience. Actual contact time is minimal: these are places to do, not to meet.
The data is you
Using Flow Club was a positive experience for me, but what I found most interesting was how it reflects the constant transformation of our working lives into data.
We know that much of the human experience becomes data. Flow Club is another manifestation of this change. Essentially, it takes a very private and creative time, a productive time, that puts a boundary around it and turns it into a data experience that is (unless you turn off the video) captured on camera.
Lo que la empresa pretende hacer con estos datos, o qué datos compiled, no está claro. While I imagine part of his plan might involve combining AI-based emotion sensing with work psychology and machine learning for decision support, that's not explained on the site.
The business model seems to be that of a members' club (not cheap). Flow Club users pay €40 per month for the opportunity to meet in these small online breakout groups. I admit I'm not sure if this model is a strong enough proposition, especially when inflation bites.
The other concern I have is about confidentiality. I've checked the site, but I don't know where the video goes, where the servers are, who is present in the sessions, and how Flow Club can expose vulnerable endpoints to attack.
Given the history of online video and the web, I find it essential that Flow Club be transparent and robust when it comes to security, especially if you hope to develop an enterprise presence. Without verifiable security commitments, the service cannot be expected to be used in a regulated industry, and you have to wonder if the same results could not be generated using any video collaboration service.
I enjoyed using it, it allowed me to work and I think it will build its own audience over time. I just wonder if Flow Club couldn't get more ambitious.
But the data must support the human.
What is worth discussing, especially as we explore how best to harness the distributed nature of the Internet to enable work in a deeply fractured historical time, is the effectiveness of these sessions; I found the ones I attended most productive. (The company says that paying members typically attend six per week.)
Flow Club reminds me of Teamflow, except that while the latter supports teams that already know each other, the former seems to be focused on giving members team experiences with people they don't know. It also reminds me of Focusmate, which brings people together with responsible co-workers.
At this point in the evolution of the workplace, we look to tomorrow even as the next chapter emerges into the light. Nobody really wants to go back to the office unless they rent real estate. All we really want to do is sink and grow.
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