*Take a moment right now to change your slack handle to your name and add a headshot of yourself*
Slack is by far the most often used form of communication in SyBBURE. It is used for short messages, reminders, simple questions, and casual chatting. You will get regular communication from Team SyBBURE using Slack. You will also use this to talk with your VIX team and Subgroup and you will get reminders about all mandatory meetings. You will need to install the Slack app on your phone. Please set your notifications to allow at least #officialnotifications, #general, and your subgroup channel as well as direct messages. You will likely be in many other channels, and you can set your notification preferences as you like for those. Note that you can snooze notifications at certain times so that you won’t get woken up from late night chats.
There are several ways that you can customize slack both for workflow and for style.
Add a profile picture. This can be a picture of yourself or any symbol that you feel represents you. A picture of yourself will help others recognize you in person but you do you.
Change your name. Most people choose either their real name or some kind of play on their name. As long as we can tell who you are, you can make your name whatever you’d like.
Add custom emoji’s to slack. We have added many emojis to our Slack already and every person can add their own. Looking for that perfect react and we don’t have it? Feel free to add it to our space
Group channels in the sidebar. You’ll notice if you browse our channel list that there is about a million channels. You can stay organized by grouping channels together and starring your most frequently used channels and DM’s.
Slack has excellent documentation for everything from changing the way stuff works to integrating other site and programs through their extensive API. If you want to do something with slack, you probably can.
Where to post / find information
There are several important slack channels that are used in a consistent way to help everyone know where to put and find information. Please follow these guidelines when posting in our channels to avoid confusion:
#officalnotifications – This channel is almost entirely calendar reminders that go out an hour before all of our meetings. This is automated, and it is very rare that anyone manually posts anything in this channel.
#general – This channel is for everything specifically about Sybbure. It is for team-wide communication and announcements. You will see information about the program, google forms to fill out and reminders to do them, and questions and answers about the program.
#bulletinboard – This channel is for opportunities outside of Sybbure. Hear about a cool hack-a-thon? Know about a scholarship? Have an event that you want people to come to? Post it here.
#random – This channel is straight out of the collective unconscious. Want to debate about how soup is really ravioli? Got your finger on the pulse of the meme economy? Have a cat that wants to type something on your keyboard. It goes here
#sybburegram – This channel’s name is a play on some hip new webapp everybody is apparently using. Post your pics of your pets and fun times with friends here.