We've gathered some planning tips and best practices for making Slack work for your conference or event.

Benefits ✨

• Create a centralised space to share news, updates and policies
• Answer questions and check in with attendees throughout the conference
• Enable further discussion and chances to connect before and after the event
  
  

What to keep in mind

Consider the following before you decide to use Slack:

🤖 Some assembly required

Starting a workspace for conference organisers and volunteers takes time and planning. Read on for tips on setting up a workspace.

📧 Email addresses may be visible to everyone

By default, members' email addresses are displayed in their Slack profiles. Ask attendees to use an email address that they are happy to share publicly. Or, you can hide members' email addresses. 

🛠 Communities take work

Brand new workspaces need guidance to get them off the ground. Consider writing a Code of Conduct to help members to feel safe and welcome. 

 

Set up your workspace

First, you'll need to create a workspace for your conference. Then consider taking the following steps:

• Choose your workspace admins
  Promote conference personnel to the workspace admin role. This allows them to help to manage your workspace.
• Let interested attendees request a Slack account
  Build a form for attendees to request invitations to your workspace. (You could use a service like Typeform, Wufoo or Google Docs to manage this.) Make sure some invitations are accepted before sending more.
• Create a dedicated channel for announcements
  Set your #general channel so that only workspace owners and admins can post in it. You can rename the channel to something like #announcements.
• Fine-tune your announcement settings
  We suggest restricting the use of @channel, @here and @everyone to workspace owners and admins. This should help to reduce noise for attendees.

Tip: do you have news to share? Workspace admins can use @everyone in the #announcements channel to notify all attendees of updates.

 

Plan ahead

We suggest running your conference workspace for at least three months:

⏳One month prior

Attendees can introduce themselves and make plans ahead of time.

🗓 During the conference

Slack can serve as a central hub of contact over the course of your event. Attendees can make last-minute plans and continue discussions. You can monitor channels to answer questions and keep an eye out for issues.

⌛️One month after

Attendees can continue to share what they’ve learned and follow up with peers.

 

Start with some useful channels

In your Settings, you can choose to let members create channels on their own. (You can archive or delete channels if you need to.) Reduce clutter by limiting channels to those created by organisers.

Note: add your most important channels to your default list. New members will join these channels automatically.

Suggested channels

#intros
Create a dedicated channel for attendees to share a brief bio. Pin an example to the channel for others to follow.

#codeofconduct
Set expectations for how people should interact – both at the conference and within Slack. Pin any guidelines and include the people that attendees can direct message with concerns.

#slack-tips
Add a #slack-tips channel for people to share their best practices for using Slack!

 

Good luck, and happy planning!