What Slack channels should we have?

[danielbachhuber]

We're starting out with #watercooler. As the number of members in the group grow, we'll want some sensible subgroups. By topic (e.g. open source or charting) and location (city or state) could be one approach.

[montchr]

As discussed in the BCNI session, how about #helpdesk, for one? I like having topic + location.

[oiler]

In a smaller, but related Slack Team, I have channel setup that brings in (via IFTTT recipes) links to blog posts for various relevant product / engineering blogs. That blog list is small at the moment (and embarrassingly lacks Fusion's) but I find it really useful as a channel to be able to aggregate and browse updates. Here's the current list https://gist.github.com/oiler/1e2982d6cd8eda86e167

[danielbachhuber]

Good suggestion, Justen.

I think we should also have #meta for conversation about the group, so we don't bog down #watercooler

[oiler]

That sounds right to me. Maybe even make #meta the default so all of the " **** joined " notices get dumped in to there instead of #watercooler?

[oiler]

recommendation #2:

events channel, maybe sorted by geo region?
a place to post/discuss meetups, learning sessions, conferences, tricks for getting in to SRCCON, etc.

[greglinch]

Some fairly generic ideas to start:

• #introductions: where newcomers can introduce themselves and existing members can keep up with who has joined
• #job-board: to post listings
• #must-reads: this could get a little crazy, but might be handy to point to important news

[mwmott]

Not sure if this is still live, but #futureofnews for these sorts of discussions?

[danielbachhuber]

Not sure if this is still live

We haven't really broken into rooms yet because I don't think the conversation volume has necessitated it yet. Could happen in the near future.

#futureofnews for these sorts of discussions?

Good suggestion :)

@mwmott I've also sent a Slack invite to your Gmail address.

[mwmott]

@danielbachhuber Cool! Thanks very much. Also, this reminded me of Lonely Coders Club - nicarlcc.slack.com.

[danielbachhuber]

We might also benefit from an #announcements channel so I don't have to @channel for announcements.

[bhickman313]

How about a channel on #analytics/ metrics?

[knowtheory]

#music

[oiler]

If we want to add the product blog channel here, I have improved the logistics on my end. I'm now using feedly pro to build a collection and then sending that collection to bitly (public feedly collections still aren't available).

The public bitly profile is here and the links have started to add themselves:
https://bitly.com/u/oiler

IFTTT looks for updates to that bitly profile and will post links into a designated slack channel. The bitly connection works best because Slack is able to scrape the source URL of a bitly link and grab the proper meta data to display in the Slack channel. This is better than posting straight to Slack, since the URL's meta info is more reliable + consistent than the rss feeds.

[JoeGermuska]

#python

[davisshaver]

There are a bunch of good suggestion in here. Maybe we should do an informal poll in #watercooler this week? Give each suggestion an emoji, set some floor of upvotes (5-10?), and start with that batch?

[danielbachhuber]

I'm up for whatever. I don't think we have the problem of too many rooms right now, so I'm open to creating some.

[jessiewillms]

i'm part of a slack group for the coding bootcamp i went to & the most useful channel is a #helpme. it's open to anyone to post coding problems and get help/feedback from the group. a help channel to focus on journo-code issues would be really great!

[danielbachhuber]

Created #helpme!

[gr33ndata]

I have a general interest in Data Journalism. I am currently writing a book about Data Visualisation using D3 and want to discuss examples related to Data Journalism. I gave a couple of data journalism trainings in the middle east. I'd like to join your Slack group, though, I do not have a mail address at one of the orgs you mention there

[davisshaver]

@gr33ndata Just sent you an invite 👍

[gr33ndata]

Thank's Dave

[maggie-lee]

Hey y'all,
any interest in a #state_capitol room? A place to ask random state-y questions like "Hey, my state claims it's perfectly normal to charge $50 per page for open record copies. Is that normal in your state?" Suchlike that.