Slack?

[dmelcer9]

810 to use Slack within the controls group, but barely anyone posts anything. We've tried to get programmers to join #programming, but it has 5 members in all (including me and the head of controls. There's only 3 new programmers in there, out of about 10).

[guniv]

We just set up Slack on our team with just team leads and it's going great so far. We're going to add all team members soon.

My favorite part is the integrations - we use Trello for a Scrum-like experience, and it posts to Slack every time a board is updated. Same for when a new revision is pushed to GitHub. It's great.

I should mention that I pushed for us to use Slack because we were having communication issues with our team leads. I would email and text them and still barely get replies. With Slack you can mention someone and have it notify their phone and get their attention pretty quickly. You can also search Slack!

[Billfred]

4901 didn't choose to go with Slack, because we had a few too many users on dumbphones still. We chose GroupMe because it works over SMS as well, and that works well for our purposes.

That said, the company I work for uses Slack all the time and it's wonderful. I was pushing for us to use it across the mentors of different FRC teams here in South Carolina; the real test will come next season, I suppose.

[StAxis]

We started using Slack this summer, it has worked well for us so far and we plan on trying to use it during build season. Like others have said, it is primarily the leads who use it, but I think that is to be expected of any communication system on a team.

If you have a lot going on that different people are involved in, and you find that many of your younger members are without facebook, then it helps out a lot.

[David Brinza]

Team 980 started using Slack in June as an experiment. Overall, the responsiveness of student team members is much better than our email experience. Though, not the engagement we'd really like to see. When asked, most students "see" many of the posts. They often fail to respond when requested because if they don't do so immediately, they forget about the message (too many shiny objects, too little time).

We've integrated Trello, GitHub, Google Drive, and DropBox (from which we are migrating to Google Drive). We like the ability to create channels dedicated to team functions and logistics (chairmans, controls, attendance, etc.), though it took time for members to learn to post outside of the general channel.

For better or worse, a private student_forum was setup (no mentors), and we've actually seen useful products: the students nominated on team leaders within the forum, which they posted to the general channel. We use the random channel for pun-ishment and off-the-wall humor, etc.

We'll see how Slack works through our build season, as students and mentors have come up the learning curve in the off-season.

Good luck, teams!

[Sperkowsky]

I'm going to implement this in my own team. We are using email right now and have forever and it doesn't work well despite the fact that our district has a centralized email system.

People don't ask questions because it's too daunting.

I was actually going to have everyone put down their numbers to add everyone to a group me but now I'm going to set this up.

Thanks

[legts]

My team uses Slack at competition. It's very useful for making sure everyone can contact everyone else, so if someone doesn't have someone elses' phone number it's not a problem. We also use Slack for communicating between drive coach and scouting empress.

[Ty Tremblay]

GameSense has been using Slack for 2 years now and we love it.

[Sean4488]

We use slack on 4488 but we're only just starting and find it is over complicating some things, but is convenient for quick conversations and easy sharing of data.

[Alyssa]

2485 has just recently started using Slack and we couldn't be happier with it. We all have it set up on our phones to give us notifications just as we receive txts, and students and mentors can all talk in different channels professionally unlike they could in a group chat or a FaceBook chat. It also gives a method for keeping track of all conversation and history. We love Slack so far!

[RamZ]

Team 4 transitioned from Google Hangouts to Slack recently and we love it!

FYI, for teams who have 501(c)(3) status (or those whose schools do), you can apply as a nonprofit (at yourSlackTeamName.slack.com/nonprofit), and get free access to one of the paid tiers, adding some functionality.

[TheBoulderite]

We started using it during last year's competition season. The team was able to communicate with each other and keep up with the team's developments easily. It's a pretty great communication tool! I'd recommend it.

[Picitigris]

Our team uses it all the time and it is super useful. We've got communication across the board from Chairmans to build and it's gotten more people involved with other aspects of the team. Which is a huge help because our team is small and everyone does a little of everything.

[Sperkowsky]

I figure I would give an update on our teams usage.

It has been great.
We use it pretty much exclusively for inner team contact and it has allowed our team to be much more connected then ever before. We have had fun with things like Slack bot and we are amazed by the amount of awesome plug-ins like Trello, Skype, Google Hangouts, and Google calendar. Sharing pictures is awesome. Even stuff like being able to pin things like the manual password makes it worth it. We highly recommend it.

[BenBernard]

We use Slack, GitHub, and Waffle.io...and can't imagine it any other way. It's a very effective combintion.