Why would a conference Slack be useful?

conference-slack-reasons.md

In addition to normal conference discussion that happens on Twitter, I think that having a dedicated place for conference discussion (Slack, Discord, or something else) would be useful.

There are a few limitations with Twitter:

• conversations are not centralized around topics
• not everyone wants to use their Twitter to discuss conference stuff (some people are more selective about how they tweet)
• 280 character limit, no formatting
• hashtag gets flooded with well-meaning but possibly over-eager live-tweeters

Here are the benefits of using a messaging app in addition to Twitter:

• private discussion groups for sponsors, speakers, organizers to communicate about logistics or anything else that needn't be public
• no character length limitations
• easy way for attendees to report problems or as questions to organizers - including CoC violations
• public discussions can be organized around topics (either related to sessions like Testing and Devops, or even more practical/off-topic ones like Things to do in Austin or Pre-conference running club or.... Wurstcon)
• Sponsors can interact directly with attendees (with restrictions) - e.g., "Hey @JoeShmoe, you signed up for our drawing and won! Swing by our booth to pick up your free t-shirt!"
• official conference announcements are quick and easy (and delivery is ensured)

For announcements and stuff (including sponsor announcements) twitter or other social media is the best medium IMO.

I think adding channels to existing slacks/discords/gitters so for instance a PHP conf would maybe have a channel in the Laravel and Symfony gitters. This hits the topical communities within a single conference.

For more small self organizing I think a service like Telegram might fit better for conferences. I know that the Laravel community has used this for Laracon. The channeling to DM to group for something like telegram the last time I used it (which was a few years back) seemed to be better suited for events than a slack channel.

@rtablada announcements would definitely be cross-posted to various mediums.

A couple of issues @iansltx and I have thought of with using an existing Community account:

• we would need to lock down usage of @here and @channel (or their equivalents), which would affect the current usage of those accounts
• search history would be affected in Slack (10,000 message limit)
• in the case of Longhorn PHP, we are hoping to have about up to 200 attendees, which would be a massive increase over the current regular attendance in the Austin PHP slack channel. This could discourage Austin PHP folks from using the account, or at least drown out non-conference conversation
• you would likely need to be more selective about the # of channels you create