The document discusses the use of Slack to enhance collaboration among small liberal arts colleges involved in the Moodle community, organized under CLAMP. It highlights the limitations of existing tools for inter-institutional collaboration and emphasizes Slack's advantages such as speed, low barrier to entry, and effective organization of discussions. The document concludes by noting Slack's extensibility and user-friendly nature that fosters efficient communication.

1. USING SLACK TO ENABLE
INTERCOLLEGIATE COLLABORATION
IN THE MOODLE COMMUNITY
Charles Fulton (@mackensen)

2. WHAT'S CLAMP?
Association of small liberal arts colleges dedicated to
supporting Moodle environments at those institutions
Grew out of NITLE-organized camps and workshops and a
Mellon grant
Entirely self-funded and self-governed
Hosts twice-yearly unconference-style "Hack/Doc Fests"
http://www.clamp-it.org

3. COLLABORATION IS HARD
Differences between you and your inter-institutional
colleagues:
1. Institution
2. Schedule
3. Tools

4. EXISTING TOOLS
Moodle forums
Redmine
Jabber/XMPP
Google Drive
Google Hangouts
Twitter

5. Google Hangouts means never knowing how to start a meeting.
4:06 PM - 10 Jun 2015
7 21
Jared Spool
@jmspool
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INEFFICIENCIES
The Google services require Google accounts; Google
handles multiple identities poorly
None of the tools provide strong persistent non-public
group chat

6. WHAT'S SLACK?
"The prodigal child of IRC and Gmail, Slack is, primarily, a
group-messaging tool with a memory."
Scott Rosenberg, Shut Down Your Office. You Now Work in
Slack

7. HOW DO I SLACK?
1. Create a team
2. Sign-in to Slack
3. ???
4. Profit!

8. WHAT CAN I DO IN SLACK?

9. ASK

10. ANSWER
Low barrier to entry
Conducive environment

11. .

12. FILTER
Organize discussions thematically
Participate at your discretion

13. REMEMBER
Find people
Find resources
Find out what's going on

15. WHY IS SLACK BETTER?

16. SPEED

17. SERENDIPITY
Slack killed standing meetings

18. CONTINUITY
"Since Slack does mobile and notifications right..."
Jeffrey Glusman, Don't provide this perk? You're doing it
wrong!

19. EXTENSIBILITY

20. WHAT INTEGRATES WITH SLACK?
Google Drive and Hangouts
Dropbox
Twitter
RSS
plus a couple dozen more, with an API to boot...

21. IN CLOSING
"Above all, it's a considerate program: It does things the way
you’d want it to, often without your having to tell it — and if
you want it to do something differently, it almost always lets
you."
Scott Rosenberg, Shut Down Your Office. You Now Work in
Slack

22. LINKS
Jeffrey Glusman,
Scott Rosenberg,
Tim Urban,
Andrew Wilkinson,
Collaborative Liberal Arts Moodle Project
Slack.com
Don't provide this perk? You're doing it
wrong!
Shut Down Your Office. You Now Work in
Slack
11 Awkward Things About Email
Slack’s $2.8 Billion Dollar Secret Sauce