Figure out chat

[davclark]

@michaelbrooks has already created http://chat.data.uw.edu
@karthik likes slack, and @davclark created https://msdse.slack.com
@fernando seems to like gitter (here is the ipython chat)

Concerns raised at the unconference included:

1. Conversations
2. Archiving information
3. Broadcasting info

The kernel of this conversation perhaps started around data sharing.

[davclark]

Slack is apparently $6 / user for full service. @karthik apparently has a free educational account for @ropensci. Concerns are also raised about sustainability of this service.

[karthik]

@davclark In many ways the exact same concerns can be articulated for GitHub.
Jey and I also realized that if Slack implodes, so what? No other service is guaranteed and Slack is very export friendly.

[davclark]

Note - Slack also supports XMPP and IRC clients, so you're also not roped into using Slack's desktop or web applications.

[fperez]

BTW, I wasn't particularly advocating for gitter over anything else, just mentioned to Dav that we liked it at IPython. I'm trying out slack now for the first time, I'd heard good things about it several times, and this seemed like a good excuse to test it. It seems pretty nice from my 5-minutes of experience so far.

[davclark]

As I think all of us have discussed in pairs, there will be a lot of administrative momentum here. I suspect gitter may be a lower barrier... note that it supports a wide variety of integrations (just like slack), but uses github oauth and automatically configures projects for each of your repositories. Team membership can also be managed in one place - in github teams.

[davclark]

Gitter is also hella open source:

https://github.com/gitterHQ/services

[katyhuff]

👍 , re: open source.

[fperez]

Wow, I didn't actually know gitter was OS (though I'm sure others on the ipython team did). That's great to hear! We just wanted something better than hipchat, this is icing on the cake.

[davclark]

To be clear, gitter itself is not libre, but it has open APIs and the integrations are maintained in an open fashion. Sorry for the confusion.

[karthik]

Thanks for clarifying Dave.

Slack also allows for custom plugins (in addition to 60 standard integrations).

There is also a version of Hubot called Slackbot (https://github.com/trinchan/slackbot) that can take any custom coffee script to support various things we'd want to do.

[michaelbrooks]

I want to reiterate that the most important thing is choosing whatever communication tools make sense for us as a collaboration. The research goals of the EEWG (observing and participating in group communication) are very much secondary and I'm pretty sure that just about any communication tool can easily be made to meet those needs. Likewise, I don't want us to feel tied to the chat room. It is just one option we have.

I think we need to keep talking about what we hope these tools are going to do. As we discussed on Wednesday, no single solution is going to meet all of our communication needs, and we also can't completely anticipate what we're going to need in the future. Here are some different categories of communication we might want to plan for, in no particular order:

1. Q&A-style communication, e.g. StackOverflow. Members of our collaboration might have technical and organizational questions or problems that other people could address, and we might want to archive and preserve these exchanges for future reference, creating a kind of community knowledge base. Anybody involved with the DSE grant might be interested in these.
2. Planning and coordinating about specific projects, common in GitHub issues or project-related emails. These are focused, practical, and usually of interest to only a small number of people. They should probably be preserved for later access, but they don't need to be sent to everyone in the DSE.
3. Announcements to the entire DSE group, such as new tools, major meeting times, program news, etc. These probably have to be emails to reach everyone, and if there were an official mailing list or something it may or may not be moderated by DSE organizers. Announcements are most relevant when they are posted and not as much later on.
4. Social, meta, and ephemeral communication. For example, gathering interest in a vague new idea, talking about work issues that has no lasting value, complaining about GitHub (as if), or posting cat pictures. This is the kind of stuff we were hoping to support with the chat room, but again, it may be that another tool is going to do that more easily.

That's not an exhaustive or authoritative list, so please discuss!

Some of these types of communication make sense to be selected at the level of the entire DSE collaboration, because they are potentially interesting and important to everyone. Others (such as project-specific stuff) seem to be best left to specific teams.

For the general-interest stuff, it is also very important to consider how approachable each specific tool is to everyone in the collaboration. Just picking at random, Gitter describes itself as "Chat, for GitHub" -- essentially developer-friendly chat. That could be a major turnoff for people who don't use GitHub. We need to think clearly about who we envision using each tool, and be mindful of the diversity of the DSE collaboration as a whole.

How have those of you testing Slack liked it so far?

[davclark]

First, I'd like to sum up what I read: the chat platform should be an open, transparent, and inviting place for folks to communicate on general issues and build community in MSDSE.

Slack seems about as good for that as Gitter.

My personal take: I still don't grok Slack integrations properly, and I find some integrations (e.g., Trello) to be better conceived on Gitter. Perhaps because Gitter's APIs are more open? Of course, it seems there are folks who are motivated to set Slack up well, and @karthik seems to think this will be a fairly light, mostly up-front burden.

One specific area of confusion: on Gitter, you have access to what you have access to on GitHub. On Slack, who can see GitHub integrations that I registered using my GitHub credentials?

The folks from Gitter offered free accounts for academics. I don't know if that will get ALL of the MSDSE folks, but we can try. @karthik - do you want to inquire at Slack?

[karthik]

@davclark Sure, I'll ask.

[karthik]

@davclark How many users should I ask for? ~100?

[michaelbrooks]

I'd say go bigger, maybe 300-500, just to be safe, but maybe you see a smaller group of people using this? Weren't there ~100 people just at the summit?