We will be moving Open edX community discussions from IRC (#edx-code on irc.freenode.net) to Open edX on Slack. Get an invite here. We spent a lot of time discussing the switch, and we’re excited about the opportunities it creates for greater community involvement.

What is Slack?

Slack is a team communication tool. It provides a space for real-time conversation through open and private channels and direct messaging. It is possible to integrate Slack into third-party apps (like Google Drive and GitHub). The Slack team is working on adding voice and video.

Why Slack?

Setup, mobile and desktop apps, and the web UI for Slack are more streamlined than those for IRC. There are already mobile apps for Android, iOS, and Windows.There are desktop apps for Linux, Mac OS, and Windows.

Many organizations are moving to Slack as their primary collaboration tool, and a number of current Open edX contributors already have Slack accounts for other organizations or projects. Slack essentially presents a beneficial network effect: it is easier to integrate our Slack team into your workflow, rather than adding another tool.

Slack was popular with the community duing the 2015 Open edX Conference and Hackathon as a tool for discussion and collaboration. Additionally, Slack is free, and our non-profit status grants us unlimited archives (which are searchable) and other important features critical to making Slack a viable option.

Joining Slack

We have made a page that enables you to join the Open edX team on Slack now! Submitting the form on that page will create an invitation to join the Open edX Slack team. Once you join, you’ll need to pick a username and password. The username will need to be unique within the Open edX team on Slack, but if you’re already using Slack for a different team, you can reuse the same username if you want.

Using Slack

We encourage you to use Slack to enable synchronous communication. Currently, there are five channels on our Slack team:

  • #general (for all things Open edX)
  • #docker (for containerizing all the things)
  • #ionisx (for collaborating with IONISx)
  • #ops (for discussion of operational issues)
  • #tastyburger (for joking around)

Don’t limit yourself to these five channels. Create new ones for working groups, feature design, or other topics. We hope Slack will help more community members feel like they can participate in Open edX conversations, and and that this tool will provide you with more opportunities to interact with one another, share ideas, and build great things.

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