Slack is a program (kids these days would call it an app, but I'm old enough to remember when Windows 3.1 was what there was) that is designed to consolidate messaging between members of a team, like at a company or business. I've taken the features available on the free version and turned it into my own private version of Facebook. See my previous post.
I wanted to show you how I use Slack, and invite you to join our Slack if you're interested. Right now, the Slack is really centered around the things that I think are important, but you can help make it even better.
First of all, you should know that you can create more than one Slack "site." So, on the left-hand side, in the green oval, you'll see that I have 3 Slack sites that I'm a part of. One of them is from work (we mostly use it to share YouTube videos with each other, so that we can do research and not miss out on the nonsense that happens in the office), one is a personal one for my writing projects (like this blog, the novel I'm working on, my atrophying podcast, and my social media presence), and the third is my "public" Slack, which I'm hoping to use as my mini-Facebook.
Inside the red circle are the main channels within the Slack. A channel is like a page within Facebook. Kind of. They're more like chat rooms. All channels have to be in all lowercase (this is a stupid limitation) and begin with a #. #announcements is the main channel on the Slack. Everyone who will ever join the Slack is automatically added to #announcements. We use it for... well, announcements. Things like announcing new channels, welcoming new people to the Slack, explaining rules that are particular to our Slack, reporting on the progress of my other projects, and meta discussions about the Slack itself.
The other channels I have set up are mostly centered around discussion topics:
- #cfb is for college football, including the Top 25 ranking I do throughout the season (see my Twitter feed @gkthurston for more details).
- #photos is for sharing pictures that I don't want to be as public as they are on Twitter/FB.
- #pkmngo is for talking about Pokemon Go, mostly posting updates about which Pokemon we've caught.
- #politics is for political discussions.
- #running is for updates about my running activities, and to help keep myself motivated to run.
- #scripturestudy is for sharing insights that you find while reading the scriptures. It helps me me even more motivated to study the scriptures.
- #sports is for discussion of all sports, though right now I just have a bot adding college football scores as they happen.
- #random is for discussions that don't fit anywhere else, like sharing funny videos.
I also have a series of channels that are location based. The idea behind these is that when group members travel, they can post in the channel belonging to that area, and the Slack members who live there can give them advice about places to see, things to do, where to eat, and even set up a meet. I'm currently subscribed to all of the location channels, and I'm the only one that really uses them. But it's a good way to remind people of where and when I'll be.
You'll see that a lot of these things aren't information I want to be available to the general public, which makes it hard to decide who to add to the Slack. So far, the problem has been solved by a lack of interest from others. But I think a good minimum standard is people that I've met in real life and had a significant interaction with.
The last thing I'll write about is keeping up with the Slack. It's designed to be a messaging program. It's not very effective if people don't check it often. But with the low amount of posts, it's not very rewarding to check the Slack constantly. The best solution is to download the app on your phone (available on both Android and Apple as far as I know) and let it notify you when things happen.
Anyway, if you want to join the Slack, you have to be invited. And you have to contact me to send you an invite.
