Memo: Note-taking for Technical Teams

Note-taking, a “practice of the greats”

Not only do famous people swear by it (some of the most famous note-takers include Bill Gates, Thomas Edison, Richard Branson, J.K. Rowling and Freddie Mercury), but different forms of note-taking have been shown to improve learning, reduce the time for learning and increase conceptual understanding.

I’ve personally always needed to write down thoughts and ideas that pop into my head to relieve the anxiety of forgetting, to structure my thinking, and to be creative. Since I spend most of my waking time at work, most of my notes are work-related, and I’ve always found it odd that all note-taking tools that I’ve tried (and I’ve tried quite a few) are focused on casual and personal note-taking. 🤔

The modern workplace

When I think about the “future of work” and the places that I’ve been fortunate to work at, I immediately imagine knowledge workers, technically literate, using lots of software, working in teams to get their job done in a fast-paced ever-changing world. More and more often, these teams are using communication software (like Slack) to get work done.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed 😩in such an environment, and I’ve found note-taking to be the “lifeline” that keeps things afloat. Writing down ideas for yourself or from teammates, saving links and Slack messages, taking notes in meetings, connecting different thoughts for a project in a note, sharing notes with your team — these are all necessary habits for a fast-paced team to do its best thinking, and conversely, its best work.

Unfortunately, the note-taking tools available today are outdated, bloated or under-powered.

Introducing Memo

That’s why, on behalf of our team, I’m excited to officially announce Memo — a note-taking app for technical teams using Slack! I realize that’s a bit of a mouthful, so let me try to unpack it.

With Memo it’s quick and easy to save and find code snippets, meeting notes, links, Slack messages, or other short work notes.

Memo is optimized for technical teams that are comfortable with Markdown formatting, Slack formatting for @users, #channels, :emoji:, syntax highlighting for code snippets, and using slash commands in Slack.

As you probably realize by now, Memo is deeply integrated with Slack. You can 🌟 a message or file to save it in Memo, you can use /memo-save to take notes and /memo-find to find them, and memo.ai links shared in Slack automatically “unfurl” so you don’t have to break your flow.

There’s a lot more that you and your team can do in Memo (link notes between them, organize them in boards, archive them, keep them private or share them with your team) —and we invite you to sign up to Memo!