What Is Slack?

Slack is an application that allows a team to chat together. It’s used in a work environment usually as a chat room, and it’s available on most platforms – you can use it in most modern browsers, in stand alone desktop apps and on mobile phones.

You can have different chat rooms, private groups, and direct messages, and it’s free to use. (There are features that you can pay for, but those are paid by the owner of the team) It’s a fairly simple app to use – and if you don’t want to install anything, then you don’t have to!

Why are we talking about Slack, anyway? Well, because there isn’t going to be a #blogclub in August (holidays getting in the way!) and because so many people ask when we’ll be doing a #blogclub outside of Bristol (It’s difficult, not being in a city to organise an event – but if you can help, get in touch!), we wanted a way to allow everyone to chat like we do in #blogclub, but without cluttering up your Twitter timelines.

One of the benefits of #blogclub is that the conversations are reasonably private – of course, anyone could tweet what is being said, but we’re usually too busy chatting! With Slack, things will be a little more private than a normal Twitter chat, so you can be a little more candid.

There are usually two parts to #blogclub – the first part where we have a discussion on a specific topic, and once that’s over, we can work on our own blogs. We’re thinking that a weekly meetup on Slack for when you’re working on blogposts could work well – perhaps a Sunday afternoon? Just having a space to chat and ask questions when you’re at home working on your blog might make things a little less lonely!

If you would like an invite to the Bonjour, Blogger! Slack rooms, then DM @bonjourblogger with your email address (you’ll need to be following) or leave a comment (you’ll need to provide your email address to leave a comment anyway!)