Introducing Slack
Dear members of the institute,
we have set up an institute-wide Slack workspace which many have already joined and we would strongly encourage all members of the institute to sign up to so that we can all stay connected during the Corona pandemic. The Slack workplace name is thpcologne and you can sign up using any @uni-koeln.de or @thp.uni-koeln.de at this link (if you would like to sign up with a different email address please contact Carsten Bauer bauer@thp)
For those of you unfamiliar with Slack: It is a sophisticated chat platform used by many tech companies as a substitute for email. I have made a short video explanation for how the condensed matter groups have already started using Slack to stay in touch (found here).
Ideally we would like at least one member of each working group as an administrator so please contact us if you’d like to be more involved!
The main points of the video in text form:
Slack enables communication in multiple ways:
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The workspace is divided to different “channels” which allow you to have discussions about specific topics or in specific contexts. For example you could have a channel with your work-group, a channel to discuss your upcoming tutorial with the tutors, or partake in some of the institute wide channels .
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We’d especially encourage you to make use of this to keep up discussion with colleagues digitally by direct messaging them and by more inventive methods, for instance perhaps you could set-up a coffee corner for members of your group to arrange to video chat.
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Slack is particular well suited to spontaneous video chatting; it has built in 1 on 1 video chat and for group chats it has excellent integration with Zoom enabling people to pop in and join video chats.
A few further notes: Only the last 10000 messages are saved so very important information should be saved elsewhere.
You can be a member of multiple Slack workspaces and easily and quickly change between them, so those already in the CMT Slack don’t have to worry.
Best, Henry Legg, Ori Alberton, Carsten Bauer, Anne Matthies, Jan Attig