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Communication policies

Slack

The main method of communication within the DevOpsDays Chicago team is via Slack. The primary Slack workspace used by the team for intra-team communication and collaboration is devopsdays-chi.slack.com. Two other Slack workspaces are also used for collaboration and communication with larger groups; devopsdayschicago.slack.com (for all event participants, including sponsors, speakers, and volunteers), and devopsdays.slack.com (for collaboration with organizers of other DevOpsDays events worldwide).

devopsdays-chi.slack.com

This is the Slack workspace where most collaboration inside of the Chicago team occurs. The following expectations exist for all organizers on the team.

  • Log into this Slack workspace at least once a day (holidays and weekends excluded!)

  • Respond to any @ messages to you (or to @channel or @here) within one business day

  • Post your weekly status update to the #standup channel

  • Review the #general channel as well as any committee-specific channels you participate in.

  • If you are going to be on vacation or not available for communication via Slack for a period of time (which we endorse!)update your status in Slack to reflect this (example: "on vacation until Jan 14; will not be checking Slack or email")

devopsdayschicago.slack.com

This Slack workspace is used in the days leading up to the event, during the event, and a few weeks following the event, to communicate with event participants. All organizers should have an account in this Slack workspace.

  • Check this Slack workshop regularly during the days of the event

  • Set your display name in this Slack workspace to <Your Name> - Organizer (example: "Matt Stratton - Organizer" with a username of "mattstratton-org")

  • Do your best to assist any questions that might come up. Pay special attention to the #event-questions channel.

devopsdays.slack.com

Participation in the global devopsdays organizer Slack workspace is optional, but highly recommended. Be sure to set "Chicago" in your profile so other organizers know what city you help to organize!

Email

All DevOpsDays Chicago organizers are set up with a Google Apps account under the devopsdayschi.org domain. It is at your discretion if you choose to manage your email in that inbox, or to forward mail sent to you to another email address. By default, all meeting invites for the team will be sent to your devopsdayschi.org email address/calendar, but you can feel free to forward those invites to the calendar of your choosing, or to invite an additional calendar of your choosing to that invite. The devopsdays.org email aliases (including [email protected], etc) will only forward to your devopsdayschi.org email address.

Regardless of how you choose to manage this email, the following expectations exist:

  • Respond to any actionable email sent to you within 1 business day (unless otherwise specified)

  • If you are sending email to teammates with required actions, try to include "[Action Required]" in the subject, and be sure to provide your expectation of this action (i.e., "please fill out this spreadsheet by our next team meeting")