[technology taskforce] TheVerge: Why Slack could be the future of conferences

[Dev Anand Teelucksingh]

http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/18/9349425/slack-future-of-conferences-xoxo-festival

Excerpts:

"...at the XOXO Festival...I saw a new app remaking the conference
experience in more ways than I could count. And the app, strangely
enough, is Slack.....

....Here’s how it played out at XOXO Festival, the 4-year-old creative
playground curated by internet heroes Andy Baio and Andy McMillan. The
Andys, as they are collectively known, bring together comic-book
artists, web developers, musicians, designers, startup CEOs, and other
creative types to discuss the challenges and triumphs of making things
independently, online and off. They limit attendance to about 1,000
people chosen through a lottery; the people who attend include many of
the forward-thinking types you once found at South By Southwest. And
this year, more than a month before the festival, they created a Slack
team that anyone attending was free to join....

By the time XOXO got underway, attendees had created more than 150
channels to discuss and organize around nearly every topic imaginable.
The most widely read channels were "the commons," where the Andys
posted news about the festival relevant to all attendees. But
subgroups formed in a hurry. There were channels for discussing
accessibility; channels for singles and the polyamorous; channels for
people interested in cannabis; channels for attendees who identify as
LGBT. Some channels had dozens of members; others had 10 or fewer.

The result was that by the time many attendees arrived in Portland,
there was already a subset of their fellow festival-goers waiting to
greet them. And throughout the three days of XOXO, Slack was a
thriving hub of conversation, offering a place for attendees to
encourage and congratulate speakers, ask questions about the event’s
code of conduct, and find like-minded souls with whom to sneak out and
grab a beer, or a bite, or whatever."

Dev Anand