31 December, 2016

How scientists use Slack : Nature News & Comment

How scientists use Slack : Nature News & Comment: "MacArthur's lab isn't the only scientific group that swears by Slack, which was launched just 3 years ago, but now boasts more than 3 million active daily users worldwide, and which has rapidly become popular with media organizations and technology firms. Billed as 'team communication for the twenty-first century', Slack is a platform on which groups can share files, data, news and jokes, and generally track their work. It provides base-level free accounts but charges users to store more than the latest 10,000 messages. As MacArthur's lab has done, users can set up their own invitation-only pages — say, at 'mylab.slack.com' — and organize conversations into searchable public or private channels. The platform lends itself to much more informal, and thus easier, communication than e-mail, notes Konrad Karczewski, a geneticist and postdoc in MacArthur's lab. “I'm just typing whatever comes into my head, as if we were having a face-to-face conversation, but online.”

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