Slack

We are currently using Slack on a trial basis as a better interface to our IRC channel.

Our Slack channel is intended to be used as a bridge to our IRC channel, providing better support for mobile users, and modern features like auto-expanding images and web links. There is no plan to fully migrate to Slack.

It's best to avoid using Slack features that aren't accessible to IRC users, such as creating other channels.

Get an invite

Head to this handy page in order to receive an invite to our Slack "team".

Download Slack apps for your devices

Slack is available as a download for most popular platforms, including Windows, Linux, OS X, Android and iOS.

Slack trial

Evaluation of the Slack trial can be found here

IRC mirroring

We have a bot that mirrors conversation between Slack and IRC, allowing people on either platform to talk to each other. Images uploaded to Slack are automatically mirrored to Imgur for the benefit of IRC users. Joins and parts are not shown in Slack as it'd generate too much noise in the channel.

Set a Username

Slack uses a background username which it tries to guess based on your email address. Whilst this doesn't get shown much in the slack app, it does get used as part of the IRC mirror. If you sign up with an email like "hackspace@yourdomain.com" then your username gets set to "hackspace" which causes a lot of confusion and problems.

https://leedshackspace.slack.com/account/settings -> Scroll to the bottom and you can check/change hte username that you're using on slack. Please don't use common words or anything that could be misunderstood as being an official hackspace username.