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Old School vs. New School

Thoughts on unconventional methods and the ever-changing mix of tools people use to get things done.

Aug 03, 2026 2-min read

Image Source: Google Gemini/Nano Banana via Claude Code

For my entire career, workplace tech and collaboration have fascinated me. I suspect that my interest in these topics will never wane. Invariably at the gym, I catch a glimpse of people furiously pecking away at their keyboards. What applications are they using? Would any of them benefit my clients or me?

A Perplexing Mix

In a Slack workspace, I recently saw someone post a message in an AI channel on his use of Claude. I immediately knew that this individual:

Understood the power of generative AI and Claude in particular. (In that way, we're alike.)
Knew at least the rudiments of Slack—a noisy, often confusing morass of information.

Cool, I thought. This individual and I shared some common tech sensibilities. And four seconds later, I also knew that some pretty stark differences existed as well. From his post:

Slack Post/Screenshot | Click on the image to enlarge it.

Wow.

You can use any software program in unconventional ways.

Person X copied the Claude session and pasted it into a Microsoft Word document.

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How I Think About Collaboration

I'm not judging, but I would have shared my Claude chat in one of the following ways:

Making the Claude session public.
Blogging about it on my website. Think web, as I used to say.
Using Google Docs, Notion, or another contemporary collaboration tool.

If none of these options existed, I would have vibe-coded my own solution. Put differently, I'd never consider relying on a 43-year-old program best suited for manuscripts, reports, and their ilk.

Simon Says

Can you share Claude sessions via Word, Excel, or another tried-and-true application? Sure. You can use any software program in unconventional ways. A few examples:

Some people have emailed me 40 MB attachments instead of using iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, or WeTransfer.
Plenty of self-published authors use Word to "design" their books. The final products look decidedly amateur.
It's downright silly to store reams of structured data in a PowerPoint file, but I've seen people do it. Hell, these days you might even be able to analyze it with Claude.

There's a chasm, though, between can and should.