Running Doorly in Slack

Why that's a feature, not a limitation

Every tool that wants into your workspace costs something before it delivers anything: an admin request, a security review, a conversation with IT about what it can read. For a December activity that runs for four weeks, that overhead is usually the thing that kills it — not the budget, not the idea.

A link has none of that. You can decide to run Doorly on a Tuesday afternoon and have it in the channel by Wednesday morning, with nobody's approval but your own. It also means the calendar keeps working for the people who aren't in Slack that day — someone on their phone, someone on leave catching up, a contractor without a workspace account. The link is the same link everywhere.

Pick the channel before you pick the date

The channel decides the participation rate more than anything else you'll choose, so it's worth two minutes of thought.

What to post, and how often

Doors unlock on their own — the calendar doesn't need you to post anything for it to work. Posting is purely about visibility, and a light touch outperforms a heavy one.

What works: one message on 1 December announcing it, then the day's door link most mornings, ideally from a person rather than a bot, ideally with an opinion attached. "Door 9 is up. I think the housekeeper is lying" gets forty replies. "Door 9 is now available" gets none.

What doesn't: a scheduled identical message every day at 09:00. People learn to scroll past it inside a week. If you want automation, Slack's own scheduled-message feature will do it, but vary the wording and skip a day here and there — it should read like a colleague, because it is one.

Let the threads do the work

The engagement doesn't come from the calendar, it comes from the argument about the calendar — and Slack threads are unusually good at this. Post the door in the channel and let the theorising happen in the thread underneath it, so the main channel stays a clean run of twenty-four doors and each day's debate stays attached to its day.

A few things reliably start it: react with a suspect emoji and let people pile on, ask a direct question rather than a general one ("who's lying about the 9pm window?" beats "any theories?"), and resist correcting people who are wrong. Someone confidently wrong on day six is the best thing that can happen to your engagement numbers.

You'll notice the same pattern most teams see: it's quiet for three or four days, then one person posts a spreadsheet, and after that it runs itself.

Time zones, and the people who don't live in Slack

Doors unlock by date, not by hour, so a distributed team all get the same door on the same day and the conversation is genuinely shared rather than a rolling spoiler hazard. Someone in Auckland opening door eleven and someone in Lisbon opening door eleven are looking at the same clue.

For colleagues who aren't heavy Slack users — a warehouse team, a shop floor, people whose day isn't at a desk — the same link goes in an email, on the intranet, or on a printed QR code in the break room. They're playing the same game as everyone else, and they show up in the same participation numbers.

What the organiser actually has to do

Setup is one afternoon in November: pick a tier, add your company name, get your link. During December the honest answer is that the job is optional. Post the doors if you enjoy it and it'll run hotter; post nothing and the calendar still opens every morning and still crowns a winner on Christmas Eve.

On the larger tiers you also get the comms kit — the launch post, the mid-month nudge, the accusations-open message and the reveal, already written for Slack. It exists so that the person who owns this in your company isn't writing twenty-four announcements on top of their actual job.