The by-invitation Slack Listener Team is an online platform where you can engage in focused aviation-related conversations with other listeners of the Airplane Geeks and The UAV Digest podcasts. The podcast hosts hang out there as well.
Overview
There are many opportunities to participate in conversations about aviation: on Twitter, Facebook, online forums, texting, even email. People have different preferences – probably you love some of these and dislike others.
The problem is, at times the “signal-to-noise” ratio can be pretty bad, and sometimes these places don’t suit your lifestyle or the way you would like to interact with others online. However, we have created an alternative.
Slack
The Slack service offers a place for team messaging and collaboration. It’s a persistent chat with some interesting features that help members interact. We have built the Listener Team on Slack for those of you who enjoy our podcasts and like to talk about aviation. We invite you to sign up for free and participate in this private environment where conversations are organized into topic areas called “channels.” Team members can send other members private direct messages, file sharing is supported, content is searchable, and the management of notifications is very powerful.
Slack teams can be accessed through your browser, and through free Windows or OSX programs. Slack also has apps for iOS and Android. At this time, the desktop version is probably the most powerful. For a quick overview of Slack, visit http://slack.com/is.
How to Join the Listener Team
Send an email to thegeeks@airplanegeeks.com or feedback@theUAVdigest.com requesting access to the Listener Team on Slack. Include the email address you wish to use for your Slack ID.
Shortly after that, you will receive an email invitation to join the Listener Team for free by creating a user ID and password. With that, you log in, tweak your profile as you like, and start the conversation with other team members.
What is the Value of this Listener Team?
Other Slack teams have shown that there is value in a communication environment that is focused, easy and fun to use, with highly customizable user options and notifications, and available on nearly all devices.
The Listener Team is meant to be a place where friends of the podcast can share their common interests without the extra “noise” we find in some other places.
Tips for the Listener Team
Channels
The team is organized into a number of Channels:
- #airplanegeeks. For Aviation-related communication and posts about the podcast.
- #announcements. What it sounds like, but mostly for us to post announcements for the team.
- #eaa-airventure-osh. For talk about AirVenture Oshkosh.
- #episode-feedback. Have something to say or contribute to an episode? This is the place.
- #events-and-meetups. For, well, events and meetups.
- #innovations-in-flight. Conversation about the annual event at the National Air & Space Museum.
- #introduce-yourself. When you join, tell us something about yourself.
- #paxex. For conversations about the passenger experience.
- #random. For any completely off-topic conversation.
- #spotting-pictures. Let’s see photographs that you have taken.
- #sun-n-fun. Talk about the annual airshow/flyin season opener.
- #theuavdigest. For conversations about unmanned aerial vehicles and systems.
If Slack allowed nesting of channels, #eaa-airventure-osh, #Innovations-in-flight, and #sun-n-fun would all be under #events-and-meetups. But it doesn’t. So they are not.
When you join the listener team, you automatically join the #airplanegeeks, #announcements, #introduce-yourself, and #random Channels. Join or un-join others as you like.